Artist: Taeko Kunishima

Date of Release: 16/10/2006

Catalogue no: 1019

Label: 33jazz

Price: £12

Add to Shopping Basket

Track Listing

Appearances by

Russell Van den Berg

Line up: Russell Van Den Berg saxohone
Jim Hart drums
Richard Pryce double bass
Taeko Kunishima piano
The guest artist Clive Bell shakuhachi shakuhachi

*World Jazz*
Taeko Kunishima started to play piano at the age of seven years old.
On hearing Miles Davis for the first time, her direction changed, leading her to explore the music of many different jazz artists, and to develop her own improvisatory technique whilst studying jazz harmony.

Since moving to England, she has continued to evolve and develop her startling angular contemporary jazz approach, and influences of her native Japan.

Alongside her work with many UK jazz artists, she has also been working with musicians from many different cultures and countries, and has built up an impressive range of musical partnerships, ranging from latin pop to electronic music and contemporary Classical music.

Reviews

10/12/2006 All About Jazz by Nic Jones

Taeko Kunishima and her quartet have largely managed to avoid a lot of the well-covered ground in the modern mainstream area, and in so doing she’s carved out an identity for herself both as a composer and a piano improviser—while the group, admirably suited to the subtle, implied demands of her music, has succeeded in carving out an identity distinctly its own.

02/12/2006 All About Jazz by Dan McClenaghany

You always hear about the “sophomore jinx,” referring to an artist's difficulty in coming up with a second recording that at least matches, and hopefully surpasses, his or her debut. That's seems more a problem in popular music, where the talent pool is considerably shallower than in the jazz world.
Japanese-born and now London-based pianist Taeko Kunishima suffers no sophomore jinx on her second outing, Red Dragonfly. Her debut, Space to Be... (33 Jazz, 2004), was an auspicious beginning and an engagingly lyrical set. Red Dragonfly turns things up a notch and reveals a leap in artistic growth.
Kunishima mixes Japanese themes with jazz modes and comes up with a distinctive and original sound........
.....Taeko Kunishima's artistry evolves with this new set; she proves herself one of the more interesting new voices in jazz with Red Dragonfly.

09/10/2006 Chris Parker

…"this should be a gig to savour; few contemporary musicians so successfully blend a particular country's musical tradition with such powerful jazz playing (in this country, John Surman does it best, but it's a rare talent)". (Chris Parker’s Vortex preview page)

06/10/2006 Chris Parker

"Taeko Kunishima has clearly thoroughly assimilated, rather than simply dipped into, her varied sources, and the result is an absorbing mix of affectingly melancholic themes with more up-tempo quartet workouts from a punchy, fiercely interactive, cohesive band that promises to deliver in spades in live performance."(Chris Parker's Vortex CD review page)"