Shigeyoshi Suzuki

A killer record from the Japanese scene of the 70s - one that begins with a funky drum break, then only gets better and better as things move on! Hiromasa Suzuki plays plenty of sweet keyboards on the record - at a level that's definitely influenced by Herbie Hancock's work from the time, but which also brings in some of the best funky currents of Japanese soundtrack material - so that there's a blend of electric jazz with some great crime/cop movie modes too - served up with some nice saxophone solos from Takeru Muraoka on a few tracks, and tenor from Mabumi Yamaguchi on the rest.

In the early 70's, jazz pianist and composer Hiromasa 'Colgen' Suzuki and his self-titled trio (with Kunimitsu Inaba on bass and Hideo Sekine on drums) started working on a project of musicians which should have made a lengthy series of concept albums mixing jazz rock and world music called Rock Joint. Musicians that worked around this albums were more of jazz background and some of the musicians stayed in the line-up of both albums released as Rock Joint projects even though the style of music was slightly different; first 'Rock Joint Biwa' was centered around the japanese instrument biwa, giving a fresh feel to album's early jazz influenced psychedelic rock (conceptually inspired by mythology in the ancient book Furukotofumi), while the second one 'Rock Joint Cither' was oriented around sitar and Indian music (cither being a mistranslation of sitar)…

King Records is proud to bring back the Japanese jazz masterpieces with the latest remastering!

Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan made their first recording of the St Matthew Passion in March 1999. Twenty years later, in April 2019, it was time once again, as the singers and players gathered in the Concert Hall of the Saitama Arts Theater in Japan. ‘A profound joy’ is how Masaaki Suzuki describes his emotion at the opportunity to record Bach’s great fresco of Christ’s Passion for a second time. And this time, he and his ensemble have brought with them into the concert hall a profound and collective familiarity with Bach’s choral music, after having recorded more or less all of it in the meantime, including the complete sacred cantatas.

Only some twenty works out of what was originally a far greater number of secular cantatas have survived in performable condition. They nevertheless offer a welcome complement to our image of Bach the church musician, and reveal a composer who approached secular music with the same artistic integrity and demand for quality that we find in his sacred music.