DLC – 14 – 2017
Iwao Masuhara: upright bass
Mamoru Ishida: piano
Hikari Ichihara: trumpet
OMD is a drumless trio recently formed whose beginnings and name are explained by the band’s leader and bassist Iwao Masuhara himself in his personal website.
«I just had disbanded my previous group and was searching for something new with which I wanted to express my music. I was invited to play in a club and at least for once I wanted to try a drumless set with one horn. I choose Ishida Mamoru on piano and Hikari Ichihara on trumpet. Until that moment we hadn’t had many chances to play together, but I thought it was worth trying. That session revealed many possibilities, so I decided to put together this trio. I choose the name OMD, which stands for “One More Drink”, because I wanted to convey this idea: when someone is sitting at a bar counter asking for one more drink, it doesn’t simply mean that that person wants something else to drink, but also that he wants to spend more time in that place beacuse he likes its atmosphere and the mood created by the barman and the regular customers. In this way a sense of expectation is created and that person has the feeling that something interesting is going to happen if stays in that place. So, the additional drink is only an excuse. Creating through music that same feeling and that expectation is among the aims of this trio.»
To open the album Masuhara choses a standard not so often played and made popular in the fifities by Italian-American singer and actor Mario Lanza in the movie Toast of New Orleans, Be My Love: «It seems a song written for an Italian Opera, that’s why me and trumpeter Ichihara, that are Italy-lovers, love it so much » admits Masuhara in the liner notes. The trio members play this tune with passion and romanticism suddenly showing off the skills of their members.
To follow is Indigo Blue, an original composition written by Masuhara, starting off from a captivating main theme in be bop style offering the opportunity of a lively exchange between piano and trumpet in which is perceivable the ludic pleasure of the two members, while Masuhara keeps the rhythmic engine running before allowing hisself a solo equal to his partners in terms of “blues feeling” and expressive depth, indicatory factors of his past artistic course.
Born in the Osaka Prefecture and musically raised through the many-faceted stylistic influences of jazz, Masuhara began to perform as leader of his own groups or sideman in the clubs of its hometown‘s area passing through study experiences in New York, where he delved into classical and jazz music. Afterwards, once he resumed his activity in Japan, he had the chance to stand side by side with important musicians such as Phil Woods, Barry Harris and Lewis Nash, and form a prolific and vital quintet named “What’s Up?”.
It’s just from his previous band’s repertory that comes his That’s Not Coll At All where the bass player produces a long solo in which he seems to inclose all his adeptness and his peculiar sense of swing, leaving also room at the end of the tune for the interesting pianism of Ishida. Provided with an essential and concise style, enriched with improvisational flicks and crystalline accents, Ishida amuses us in the following Too Shy to Say, a revisitation of a Stevie Wonder’s old hit, with his personal way to revolve around the main theme, getting close and far from it like in a courtship dance, donating us one of the most intense solos of the album.
It’s the lyricism the connection-link that keeps together the member of this trio, to which Masuhara has befittingly associated the idea of “chamber music” mentioned in the album’s title.
For its part, Ichihara’s trumpet style is outlined more and more in each new recording, highlighting that distinctive “fluff” tone with which she chalks up swift notes committed to get through the harmonies, avoiding trite solutions, and enriched by the pronounced singing quality unveiled in her improvisations.
Going ahead, old standards like Ray Noble’s The Touch of Your Lips always offers a testing-ground to see the three members join the forces to create something engaging in the playing and elegant in the form.
Masuhara is an uprightbass player with a tightned groove, but also able to be light and melodic at the right moment as it is displayed on the home-straight with Hope for Pyotr, definitely the most intriguing original from the pen of the leader, that here pays tribute to the great composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, relaunching the idea of chamber music that embraces the recording through a composition that reaches its highest peak of lyricism. The theme introduced by Masuhara’s bow conveys a European Romanticism-intinged, melancholic mood in a original tune almost written by chance and greatly supported by his members: «I’ve written this tune in 2009, but I decided to record it only now. One day, while at first lights of dawn I was still envelopped in my futon (Translator’s note: Japanese traditional bedding comprising a quilted mattress that is usually laid on the floor), this melody suddenly came into my mind. With the same impetus this melody came to me, I ran to the piano and wrote it.»
The exposition of the main theme played unisonously by Masuhara and Ichihara at the end of the tune, as it happened in the first track, closes the circle of an album that, set in a straigh-ahead domain, offers to us enjoyable and intense listening moments played by valued and inspired musicians at the end of which it makes us want to have one more drink and start the listening over.
Links:
Chamber Music’ teaser www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HDIeicsIfc
OMD website http://music.geocities.jp/m_is_real/omd