Words by Justin Turford
A holy grail of Japanese jazz is back where it belongs, on the finest of vinyl discs. One of the best reissue labels out there, and a favourite of ours, Wewantsounds, has been busy on the Japanese releases recently with records from Akiko Yano, Meiko Kaji and a huge Tokyo Jazz-Funk compilation just a few of the long out-of-print gems getting remastered and rereleased. Beautifully presented and always with new liner notes, Matt Robin’s label sits alongside Analog Africa for setting the gold standard.
The spiritually charged title track ‘Watarase’ has long been a connoisseur’s choice with new versions regularly popping up (this live one from 2022 is remarkable), its emotional openness and bluesy grandeur a thing of great beauty so for the full album to get a wider release is a gift. Personally, this composition is up there alongside my favourite piano records of all time, jazz or otherwise, so I’m grateful to finally have the full album to enjoy.
After finishing his courses at the celebrated Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo, the young Itabashe quickly entered the session players ranks, recording with J-Jazz luminaries such as Sadao Watanabe, Terumasa Hino and Kohsuke Mine, recording his debut album as a bandleader in 1976 with the album ‘Toh’. A live album quickly followed before he recorded ‘Nature’ for Nippon Columbia's sub-label Better Days in 1979.
Still only 30 years old, Itabashe was being acknowledged for his unique, innovative playing style and he was only going to get better.
Over just two days in October 1981, Itabashi sat alone at the piano in Nippon Columbia's Studio 1, and cut this lyrical masterpiece on the then cutting edge of Japanese technology, Denon's PCM digital recorder. Made up of four original compositions, a superb version of Dollar Brand’s ‘Msunduza’ (from his ‘Good News For Africa’ LP), and a couple of standards, the album revealed his startlingly individual approach to playing the piano, full of complex emotions and humanity. His fingers tumble across the keys, tiny explosions of inspiration as he chases and sometimes overtakes the melodies. Very much like artists such as Keith Jarrett, Itabashi likes it loose.
Fumio Itabashi (c) Nippon Columbia, Co. Ltd
The album opens with the gentle romance of ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’, a song that began its life on the 1937 soundtrack to Disney’s ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ animated classic before metamorphosising into a jazz standard that has been covered by everyone from Miles Davis to Stanley Clarke. Itabashe doesn’t shy away from this beloved song’s original quaintness but he definitely stirs and agitates its pacing and structure, with discordant chords and blue flourishes shaking the sweetness but never straying too far into the avant-garde side of jazz. Yet.
His interpretation of Dollar Brand/Abdullah Ibrahim’s ‘Msunduza’ breaks down the South African legend’s instantly identifiable Cape Jazz sound into a disconcerting new silhouette. At moments, the composition appears intact, its joyful full piano boogie dancing away but then shadows are revealed via odd and aggressively hit chords that change its shape and mood. It sounds like he’s having fun with it!
Another mid 1930s song, Vernon Duke’s Ziegfield Follies hit ‘I Can’t Get Started’ is taken into a smoky, candle lit bar and soaked with bourbon. Bluesy yet bright, without Ira Gershwin’s tragi-comic lyrics about unrequited love, Itabashi has reclaimed it as a celebration of flying solo.
It is Itabashi’s own compositions that win the day however. The still fresh and funky sounding ‘Tone’ is a captivating eight minute tune that never lets up. Full-blooded, sensual and deeply expressive, he pounds the rhythm with dive bar intensity whilst conjuring spiralling flights of right hand melody that swing between the earth and the sky. One of my favourites on the album and very contemporary sounding.
The aforementioned master work that is the title track glides into view next. ‘Watarase’ inhabits the same galaxy as the mystical jazz wizardry of Alice Coltrane or Pharaoh Sanders. With tumbling glissandos reminiscent of and probably inspired by Coltrane’s harp, Itabashi’s chords sound traditionally Japanese but also deeply infused with the cosmic inflections of the Afro-American outliers such as Sanders and Sun Ra. It is ridiculously beautiful.
‘Miss Cann’ comes from the same inspirational source as ‘Watarase’ with an overwhelming mass of notes sometimes fighting with, rather than supplementing the dominant repeated riff. The piece seems nervous, even rushed but it works well as Itabashi knows how to pull back before any fatal collision.
The melancholia of ‘Good Bye’ wraps the album up in the deepest blue. Romantic, and occasionally a tad melodramatic, the piano poet offers a moving farewell to the listener. Again, there is that friction between the astral and the earthbound, a raw spirit who knows and dares to say what he’s feeling.
As good as it gets. 10/10
Out on 5th April 2024 on WEWANTSOUNDS
Pre-order here! https://wewantsounds.bandcamp.com/merch/fumio-itabashi-watarase-deluxe-lp-edition-with-2p-insert-and-obi-black-vinyl