Michael Pronko - The Japan Times

November 22, 2024

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Michael Pronko

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Michael Pronko

Michael Pronko writes essays for ST Shukan. He also writes for his own website Jazz in Japan, as well as for Newsweek Japan and Artscape Japan. He has published three books of essays about Tokyo and teaches American literature, culture and film at Meiji Gakuin University.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jan 8, 2003

Since winning the Thelonius Monk 1991 new jazz player's competition, Joshua Redman's career has been on fast-forward. His rise in popularity was propelled by a contract with Warner Brothers, his greatly noted graduation from Harvard, critical praise from the jazz press and collaborations with a long...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Jan 1, 2003

These things take time

Jazz fans have long taken scratches, hisses, poor miking and wobbly mixing as signs of hidden truths and authenticity in recordings of their legends. In 2002, though, they had to deal with a little cleanliness. Last year's releases of freshly remastered classics showed off extended sonic depth and range,...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Dec 25, 2002

Mulgrew Miller and Wingspan: "The Sequel"

From the opening notes, Mulgrew Miller and Wingspan's "The Sequel" sounds reminiscent of Miles Davis' classic "Kind of Blue." The similar sense of cool working through minor chord changes results in a work of unhurried calm. However, Miller is not indulging in ancestor worship. Each of his bandmates...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Dec 18, 2002

Chris Botti: "December" & Ella Fitzgerald: "A Swinging Christmas"

At the end of the year, music takes an ugly turn. Blaring from speaker after speaker are the same feeble renditions of songs that sound worse with each passing commercialized year. And what's worse, you probably know all the words. Even on hearing background music, the lyrics start to circle uncontrollably...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Dec 11, 2002

Jimmy Thackery and Tab Benoit: "Whiskey Store"

The album "Whiskey Store" pairs up two guitar wizards, Jimmy Thackery and Tab Benoit, and lets the good times fly. The blues here is tough and uncompromising, but punches with sophistication and technique. It surpasses most recordings for its consistent rollicking energy and devotion to basic blues values...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY

Dec 8, 2002

More than meets the ear

There's just not enough time to write up every good jazz band in Tokyo. As the year draws to an end, I find myself with a backlog of quality musicians who play regularly in the capital. So, in order not to leave out any great picks, here's a Christmas list for your listening pleasure. These players'...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Dec 4, 2002

Carolyn Leonhart with the David Hazeltine Trio

Female vocalists often incite bickering in the world of jazz. To compare one singer to another will draw nothing but smirks or scoffs from those dedicated to their own divas. However, for those interested in lovely singing, Carolyn Leonhart's Japan dates this month should be welcome relief. As a relative...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Nov 27, 2002

Weather Report: "Live and Unreleased"

Most "live and unreleased" retrospectives contain tracks that were once wisely relegated to storage bins. While such recordings are often excavated for all the wrong reasons, Weather Report's "Live and Unreleased" is the exception. This 18-track, two-CD set is an excellent selection of the band's greatest...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Nov 20, 2002

The Sugarman Three: "Pure Cane Sugar"

The Sugarman Three is a retro-funk jazz unit that caramelizes its sugar over a high flame. Their latest release, "Pure Cane Sugar," is their best album yet. Track two, "Take It As It Come" could be mistaken for a long-lost James Brown-Jimmy Smith collaboration. It's that good. Sugarman Three's sound...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Nov 13, 2002

The Archie Shepp Quartet

Archie Shepp was handed the free-jazz mantle directly from John Coltrane. After contributing tenor sax to Coltrane's quintessential "Ascension" recording in 1965, Shepp went on to record his own series of visceral works in a similar revolutionary style. With a group of like-minded players, Shepp continued...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY

Nov 10, 2002

Balladeer does it in his own good time

If there are no second acts in American lives, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, for some musicians at least, there's a second take. After famed recording sessions in the late 1950s that made him popular, Jimmy Scott's unique vocal style was not heard again on a new recording for some 30 years. Then, in the...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Nov 6, 2002

Chris Potter: "Traveling Mercies"

Chris Potter's "Traveling Mercies," the followup to his highly acclaimed "Gratitude" album, is in many ways better, but in all ways more adventurous. "Gratitude" paid saxophone debts to the past with tunes dedicated to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, but on the new release, Potter is...

COMMUNITY

Nov 3, 2002

Japan's hometown of jazz

Yokohama's love affair with jazz first blossomed when the West was Roarin' in the 1920s. Back then, ocean liners were bringing passengers and ships' bands from all over the world, and Japan's maritime gateway was a major port of call for steamers plying between the famed entertainment hubs of Shanghai...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Oct 30, 2002

Patricia Barber: "Verse"

Patricia Barber's singing, piano playing and songwriting have an intimacy that is veiled in intimation. She feels close, but elusive, as if she's constantly singing from the shadows. They are beautiful shadows, though, with an alluring stylishness. Over the course of seven releases, Barber has steadily...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Oct 23, 2002

Asagaya Jazz Festival

Asagaya is a quietly hip part of town with a dense nexus of sake bars, music venues, performance spaces and specialty shops. But once a year, Asagaya throws open its streets, clubs and cinemas to two days of jazz, transforming the neighborhood into Asagaya Jazz Streets.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Oct 17, 2002

Poncho Sanchez built his reputation as the West Coast's hottest conga player the old-fashioned way -- with hard work and hot rhythms. Coming up outside the New York-Havana axis of Latin music, he had to work a little harder to get his stylistic variation of Latin jazz accepted. The subtle differences...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY

Oct 13, 2002

Fiery duo take jazz to task

Pianist Satoko Fujii and her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, seem an unlikely couple to storm the citadel of jazz with challenging new sounds. Far from the typical black-clad, scowling and self-absorbed avant-garde artist, they are surprisingly casual -- the kind of people you immediately want to...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Oct 9, 2002

The Jimmy Smith Group

Before Jimmy Smith, the electric organ was almost exclusively a church instrument. That's not a bad thing, but in Smith's hands, the Hammond B-3 became an entire jazz band in itself. He brought the organ into clubs up and down the East Coast and helped turn it into a staple sound in American music. His...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Oct 2, 2002

Marcus Printup: "The New Boogaloo"

The current jazz world has become suspicious of the trend of young players managing to get great record deals early -- some would say too early -- in their careers. At times it seems any youngster capable of keeping a beat and looking good in a cover photo gets recorded. At first glance, Marcus Printup...

CULTURE / Music

Sep 11, 2002

Jon Cleary: "Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen"

When it comes to funk, few other current bands do it half as well as Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen. You can take Cleary to task for plenty of things -- being born in England (instead of funk-capital New Orleans), trying to play too many instruments (piano, organ, dobro, mandolin, bass...

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