After the final day of the exhibition we took down our instruments in just over an hour and headed for the hotel.\u00c2\u00a0 We intended to eat at the Chinese restaurant, but the queue there dissuaded us and we went again to the Japanese restaurant on the 21st floor.\u00c2\u00a0 Even that was on the full side – poor Bj\u00c3\u00b6rn had to accept eating at a non-smoking table.\u00c2\u00a0 Both Bj\u00c3\u00b6rn and Ola had a set menu, Ola heating his soba noodles and adding soy sauce to most everything, which made Bj\u00c3\u00b6rn and me cringe at\u00c2\u00a0his flagrant breaking of Japanese “rules.”\u00c2\u00a0 He liked it his way, though.\u00c2\u00a0 I had raw shrimp (ama-ebi), something else I don’t remember just now, and what I thought the waitress said was a grilled fish head, but turned out to be the bit behind the head.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the only shioyaki (salted and grilled) item on the menu, so I went for it and rather enjoyed it not being the head.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
I left early, because I intended to attend the second set of the group Dodekachordon<\/a>, playing at the Rakuya<\/a> club in Naka-Meguro.\u00c2\u00a0 I knew of the concert because way back when I stayed in Futtsu, I attended the Chiba Bay Side Jazz festival and heard the saxophonist Kazuhiro Takeda<\/a> in another formation, QUADRA<\/a>, and still get concert announcements from him.\u00c2\u00a0 Two years ago I got to hear QUADRA again and still marvel at the precision and rich sound of four saxophones playing together.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n The Rakuya wasn’t hard to find: a short walk from the Naka-Meguro metro station along a narrow boutique-lined street and there it was, on the right.\u00c2\u00a0 Inside a waiter informed me I could choose between a seat at a table where someone was already sitting or one at the bar.\u00c2\u00a0 I picked the table and got lucky: the other person was Tomy Tsuzzy, who had illustrated the Dodekachordon CD.\u00c2\u00a0 Takeda-san was talking to him and introduced me; I gave him a Patent Ochnser Wildbolz & S\u00c3\u00bcsstrunk CD in exchange for a Dodekachordon disc.\u00c2\u00a0 I wonder if he’ll like the B\u00c3\u00a4rnd\u00c3\u00bctsch?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Soon the lights dimmed and the musicians got ready for the second set, all four of them sporting some variation on a goatee.\u00c2\u00a0 They sat on the stage in front of a wall-to-wall window opening onto a courtyard with bushes and some fluorescent light illuminating a back exit.\u00c2\u00a0 Small spots dotted the ceiling that made me wonder why ceilings in clubs are always ugly, even when the rest of the decor is tasteful.\u00c2\u00a0 Here candles on the tables and washi paper covered cubes standing on end along the wall allowed the patrons to read menus and find their drinks.\u00c2\u00a0 The curtain of Christmas lights bordering the top of the bar rounded off the lighting scheme.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n I had expected jazz; the sign outside said world music; the genre when I loaded the CD into iTunes said “Holiday.”\u00c2\u00a0 The latter does the music the most justice, because the only common thread through all songs is the relaxed enjoyment the musicians obviously take from playing songs that take cues from Klezmer, Dixieland, Flamenco, Funk, Calypso, Blues, Mariachi, and other genres.\u00c2\u00a0 They had already established a rapport with the full house in the first set and kept up the light-hearted joking and lengthy facetious introductions between songs to laughter and claps from the crowd of about 40.\u00c2\u00a0 In one of the announcement Takeda-san even mentioned the traveling microscope salesman from Switzerland, but\u00c2\u00a0nobody mentioned it to me afterwards.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess nobody knew they needed an atomic force microscope<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 The music exuded\u00c2\u00a0excitement and unforced playful energy, and with the whimsical humor of their compositions I half expected to hear a song combining riffs on the jingles the train stations play when the train is about to leave.\u00c2\u00a0 While the bass and guitar mostly supplied rhythm and the saxophone and trombone smooth harmonic melodies, all players got chances at soloing and usually drew laughs from the band members sitting out.\u00c2\u00a0 The songs swung from sparse, dry bass-guitar interplay to full-on horns and a driving rhythm, making for fun listening.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Last time I’d attended a QUADRA concert, they played happy birthday for a member of the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 This time, when they introduced the band members, instead of introducing the bassist they played Wagner’s wedding march and announced his recent marriage.\u00c2\u00a0 The crowd got most excited when the bride was pointed out.\u00c2\u00a0 It fit the general atmosphere that the bassist himself initiated the rhythmical clapping for an encore.\u00c2\u00a0 I returned to the hotel tired but content.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the final day of the exhibition we took down our instruments in just over an hour and headed for the hotel.\u00c2\u00a0 We intended to eat at the Chinese restaurant, but the queue there dissuaded us and we went again to the Japanese restaurant on the 21st floor.\u00c2\u00a0 Even that was on the full side – poor Bj\u00c3\u00b6rn had to accept eating at a non-smoking table.\u00c2\u00a0 Both Bj\u00c3\u00b6rn and Ola had a set menu, Ola heating his soba noodles and adding soy sauce to most everything, which made Bj\u00c3\u00b6rn and me cringe at\u00c2\u00a0his flagrant breaking of Japanese “rules.”\u00c2\u00a0 He liked it his way, though.\u00c2\u00a0 I had raw shrimp (ama-ebi), something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,8,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}