Description

Craig & Diane Martin, executive producers

Repertoire:

Volume 1:

All Blues
Blue In Green
Missing Miles
Sky With No Tears

Volume 2:

Milestones
Nardis
So What
Ikumi’s Lullaby

 Yuko Mabuchi plays Miles Davis has taken the jazz world by storm, winning NativeDSD’s coveted Jazz Album of the Year and receiving the prestigious LAOC Audio Society Medallion.  Unlike the Recording Academy, where wide-ranging members vote for their favorites, the LAOCAS Medallion has only been awarded seven times in its history, and recipients are selected by a blue ribbon panel reminiscent of the ICMA, Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or de l’Année or Gramophone Awards.

Bob Levi, chairman of LAOCAS, wrote “Yuko Mabuchi Plays Miles Davis is much better than superb.  It is historic!  I listened to this concert performance over and over.  It is compelling.  It is lively.  It is at times explosive.  It is always original and filled with intensely new musical ideas from many old Miles favorites. Yuko Mabuchi plays so powerfully and rhythmically; she owns this music, feels this music, believes this music.  This is the real deal.  This is Audiophile Gold.   The more robustly you play it, the more alive and intimate it becomes.”

“Yuko Mabuchi combines passionate athleticism at the piano with serious musical poetry. At what became a CD release concert for much of the music on this album, fans in the 1,800-seat Segerstrom Center responded with great enthusiasm. This was a fast up tempo set resulting in thunderous applause with audience members yelling and stamping their feet for the standing ovation at the end. I recognized some audience members who had driven from San Francisco or flown in from Hong Kong and different parts of the country for the concert. Yuko signed CDs and LPs at intermission with the longest lines I’ve seen in years. Put this LP on your turntable and you will know why.” —Rick Brown, rbihifi1

Miles Davis first shared All Blues with the world on his influential 1959 album Kind Of Blue. It is a 12-bar blues in 6/8. The chord sequence is that of a basic blues and made up entirely of seventh chords using the Ancient Greek Mixolydian scale.  Yuko’s reverent arrangement and improvisation on All Blues turns away from 3/4; the trio explores this tune in 5/4 and 4/4.

Blue In Green is a Bill Evans/Miles Davis composition also from Kind Of Blue. The melody incorporates Dorian, Mixolydian and Lydian modes from Ancient Greece.  After exploring these textures, Yuko segues into an Afro feel to give new expression to this classic ballad.

Yarlung commissioned Missing Miles for this concert and recording with generous underwriting from Raulee Marcus, Leslie Lassiter and Steven A. Block.  Yuko pays tribute to various periods in Miles Davis’ career, including a hint of Freddie Freeloader which introduces the first segment and Time After Time which introduces the middle section.  Yuko alludes briefly to Tutu as the quartet launches into their final section celebrating the extraordinary musical career of Miles Davis.

Sky With No Tears is another Yuko Mabuchi original composition that reflects Yuko’s attitude toward the environment.  Yuko hopes that the people and countries on our planet will unite in our efforts to allow the earth to heal, providing clean healthy air for all of Earth’s children. This jazz waltz in A Minor is classically tinged, but develops quickly with the bass solo and piano improvisation.

Milestones is one of Miles’ forays into modal music and Yuko and her ensemble swings it in a traditional approach to this timeless classic. Milestones, which Miles Davis released in 1959, remains a quintessential example of 1950s modern jazz.

Miles Davis wrote Nardis in 1958 to be played by Cannonball Adderley for the album Portrait of Cannonball.  Bill Evans later performed and recorded Nardis multiple times, and the piece became associated with Evans.  Yuko treats this classic composition from Miles’s modal period with the respect that it deserves, with beautiful contributions from the ensemble.

Miles Davis’ So What remains one of the best known examples of modal jazz, set in the Dorian mode and consisting of 16 bars of D Dorian, followed by eight bars of E-flat Dorian and continuing with another eight bars of D Dorian.  Yuko uses the double bass to highlight the main theme. Yuko, JJ, Del and Bobby swing freely on this tune, while never abandoning the intention of the original composition.

Ann Mulally graciously underwrote Ikumi’s Lullaby, one of Yuko’s original tunes, which Yuko wrote for her niece.  This work takes its place in a series of pieces Yuko has written, inspired by her love for children, their innocence and their complexity. Although the basic 12-bar melody is simple, the chord treatment and arrangement is complex, using variations over C in the bass, and a series of passing tones.

Recorded live in the Brain and Creativity Institute’s Cammilleri Hall on April 25, 2018

Associate Producers: Billy Mitchell & Elliot Midwood

Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh & Arian Jansen
Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman, Arian Jansen & Bob Attiyeh

Vinyl mastering: Bernie Grundman

Yuko Mabuchi shines in these two 45 RPM 180 Gram volumes, celebrating her finest concert performance yet.

Many thanks to executive producers Craig & Diane Martin.

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