Masabumi Kikuchi

Black Orpheus documents a solo recital given in Tokyo in October 2012 by the Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi (1939-2015). It was his last solo concert in Japan and, according to ECM, his last anywhere. Nine wholly improvised parts frame two melodies: the theme from the 1959 film Black Orpheus and Kikuchi's own Little Abi. In his final years he was moving away from jazz towards what he called floating sound and harmonies.

Kikuchi moved from Tokyo to New York in the early 1970s and played in the band of Gil Evans. He later formed the trio Tethered Moon with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian. His trio album Sunrise, with Motian and Thomas Morgan, appeared on ECM in 2012. The recital took place on 26 October 2012 at the Recital Hall of Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, as part of Sound Live Tokyo. It was mixed at Rainbow Studio in Oslo by Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher, who produced the album. Kikuchi died in New York in July 2015, less than a year before its release.

The Tokyo parts are introspective and often sparse, single notes and chords left to ring and decay. Some turn dense and dark before thinning out again. Kikuchi slows the Luiz Bonfá and Antônio Maria theme, Manhã de Carnaval, to the pace of his thoughts. He takes it apart and reassembles it over eight minutes, with long pauses between the fragments. The encore is Little Abi, a ballad for his daughter, which he had recorded in 1973 with Elvin Jones on Hollow Out.

In the booklet the pianist Ethan Iverson recalls a note Kikuchi had left on his piano, telling himself to play slower. Dan McClenaghan of All About Jazz wrote that the album "may be the starkest, loneliest music in the world". In The New York Times, Ben Ratliff called the late solo playing "a deep-blue nebula, formally abstract yet full of articulation and musical meaning". Richard Williams, in The Blue Moment, compared the slowed-down bossa nova to Cecil Taylor recasting a Richard Rodgers song.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2459, first released in April 2016, with liner notes by Iverson.