Jazz piano plyaers of Japanese origin

I know there are lots of Japanese jazz players active in US jazz scene. Mr. Ozone, is the one and these are the most frequently played pieces at You tube.

We are all alone. Simple chord progression, very basic. It sounds nice. Listening to his balad reminds of a discussion we had in college. That was around 1960, Oscar Peterson, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, etc & etc. The best year for the so called Modern Jazz.

This is his trio version.

We were arguing whom to follow, Bill Evans or Oscar Peterson.

The LP disks were expensive at the time. The exchange rate was JPY360 to US$1. It is 1/3 now. We had to deversify the budget.

Years passed. Most of them are gone. But here are those new breeds. I am not crilicizing but the Japanese players sound too clean. There's no earthy nor gloomy feeling in there. It makes the whole sound something unrealistic. Well, for me, at least.

This is his solo of same tune.


I feel lucky because I can listen to any of those players on internet. Ozone or whoever it is.

Do you listen Radio?

I do a lot. Basically, I do not want any excessive noise around. I gave my wife to listen her favorite TV with earphone. Right, we are living rabbit burn. We used to live nice house in suburb. As we get older, it became pretty hard to go out for shopping. So we moved into a apartment house that has 25 floors.

That's right. It was 2 month ago we were hit by the heaviest earthquake in my life. The building did swing all right. We have a light hanging down from ceiling. It swung, men, it did swing and we surely got terrified.

We picked up pet cat, 16 years old by the way, and run down from 13th floor. It took much more time than we had expected. We got old. I was forced to realize that.

That was two months ago. Time flies. Well other than that, we live in peace and calm. Now I need some kind of sound every once in a while. I pick up earphone, not the headphone by the way. And listen to the Jazz.

I prefer vocal jazz sometime, piano jazz sometime, but never the jazz music of pre-1950es. And I was listening Tommy Flanagan. It's been a while. But his way of playing piano sounds so smooth. But if you wish to try his way, It's tough.

He sings. The way he sings cannot be imitated. It is completely different thing from so called swing. He sings. And I mean it. Check the video attached, you'll know what I mean.

He speaks right on coneption of Jazz

I did not go to music school. But I have listened lots of jazz and tried to imitate what they were doing. In due course, I have learned how to structure the improvisation line and how far I can go out of chord during improvisation.

It's all related to sharpening the sense of your music, I might say. This guy talks on that straight forward. He teaches in a college and admit that.