Contemporary jazz/new-age pianist Keiko Matsui is better known, but it’s her ex-husband Kazu Matsui who in the 1980s was one of the architects of the quiet storm format named after a Smokey Robinson song and album from 1975. Kazu Matsui, a master of the shakuhachi, or Japanese flute, debuted in 1981 on a solo CD with friends Lee Ritenour, Larry Carlton, Robben Ford, Jeff Porcaro and Steve Lukather.
Pioneer was actually recorded over a five-year span in the 1980s but, for reasons unknown, only just released. Many of the musical guests were fringe players then, but now read like a who’s who in contemporary jazz: bassist Nathan East, guitarists Paul Jackson Jr. and Robben Ford and saxophonists Eric Marienthal and Brandon Fields. Vocalists include Phillip Ingram, Carl Anderson, Marva King and Jennifer Warnes.
The result is the desired snapshot of 1980s quiet storm and, with 16 original tunes, there is no lack of it. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s a snapshot of 1980s quiet storm, sounding depressingly dated and surprisingly empty of any significant emotional depth.
Related Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro