Masayuki Takayanagi
Masayuki "Jojo" Takayanagi (1932 to 1991) took the jazz guitar into pure noise. Active on the Tokyo scene from the late 1950s as a bebop player and teacher, he founded New Direction in 1969 and, with the alto saxophonist Kaoru Abe, recorded Kaitai-teki Kokan and Mass Projection (1970), duets of total, unrelenting density that remain a benchmark of free music.
