Search - Natsuki Tamura :: White & Blue

Natsuki Tamura is the wildest child of a trumpeter-vocalist tradition that runs from Louis Armstrong to Don Cherry. But it's how Tamura reinvents the trumpet's palette that first catches your attention, including simultaneous (and separately miked) throat noises, multiphonics, and half-valves pressed to the wail of a shakuhachi flute. He also chants, sings, and moans when his trumpet alone won't suffice. This CD consists of 10 improvised duets for trumpet and percussion, with New Yorkers Jim Black and Aaron Alexander each joining Tamura for five of them. While each drummer has a range of techniques, Black's eerily scraped and bowed cymbals emphasize the atmospheric, and Alexander's deeper drums and pitch-altering vocal simulations create a ritualistic quality. Deeply in touch with the musical traditions of his native Japan, Tamura can also insert touches from Afro-Cuban and Indian sources. "White and Blue 4," a vocal, hints at a more pluralistic Dizzy Gillespie-Chano Pozo encounter, while "7" has a Middle-Eastern groove with a sound as keening as Cherry's. There are also uncanny echoes of jazz in the 1920s: Tamura's burred voice suggests Armstrong's in one instant, while his muted lower register has the sly buzz of a King Oliver or Rex Stewart. From stabbing, expressive blasts to whirling runs in the instrument's stratosphere and sudden evolutions of multiple sounds, Tamura combines technique, wit, and intensity into an extraordinary whole. For all its variety, White & Blue feels less like a journey than a ceremony--a series of sonic gestures revealing messages well beyond the realm of speech. --Stuart Broomer