Nuremberg, East-West Jazz Festival, 6 July 1984. Takeo Moriyama, the drummer of the first Yosuke Yamashita Trio, with his own quartet: Toshihiko Inoue on tenor and soprano, Shuichi Enomoto on flute and saxophones, Hideaki Mochizuki on bass. Recorded live and issued by Enja the same year.
Moriyama had left Yamashita in 1975 and spent the following decade building a group sound of his own. The Vap record East Plants (1983) was the studio version of this band; Green River is the same lineup, less one saxophone, on a European festival stage. Seven pieces: Ta-Ke, Night Story, Gradation, the title track, a ten-minute Tohku, Non Check, Fields.
His own records from these years, Smile in particular, have been reissued lately and written up as some of the best Japanese jazz of the period: long, slow-building pieces where the drums shape the form. This is the live document from the same stretch, on the German label that had recorded him with Yamashita a decade earlier.
Japanese CD edition from Solid's Enja Real Jazz Classics series.
