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. He divided his approach into "gradually projection", slow and spacious, and "mass projection", walls of sound, and later laid the guitar flat to attack it with objects and feedback, alongside Keith Rowe one of the first to play table-top guitar.
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. He divided his approach into "gradually projection", slow and spacious, and "mass projection", walls of sound, and later laid the guitar flat to attack it with objects and feedback, alongside Keith Rowe one of the first to play table-top guitar.
