Jazz Articles about Izumi Kimura

About Izumi Kimura

Album Review

Izumi Kimura, Barry Guy, Gerry Hemingway: Six Hands Open As One

Read "Six Hands Open As One" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
July 24, 2024

It should come as no surprise that three of contemporary music's great improvisers should obliterate the boundaries between composed and improvised music. This is the second collaboration between pianist Izumi Kimura, double bassist Barry Guy and drummer/percussionist Gerry Hemingway following Illuminated Silence (Fundacja Sluchaj, 2019), a visceral live document where improvisation played out within conceptual compositional frameworks. Six Hands As One charts a similar course, the trio responding to a range of stimuli including the natural elements, poetry and war. ...

Interview

Izumi Kimura: Translating The World Into Music

by Ian Patterson
December 13, 2023

Music may not be the most important thing in the world, not with all the turmoil that is going on, but it would be hard to envisage life without it. At the very least music can be a balm in stormy times, a distraction from the madness. Plenty of philosophers have waxed lyrical about the importance of music, but perhaps Jack Kerouac was closest to the mark when he wrote 'The only truth is music.' For ...

Album Review

Izumi Kimura & Gerry Hemingway: Kairos

by Ian Patterson
October 28, 2023

In ancient Greek kairos means the right time for action. The word relates both to archery and weaving. It is an apt title for pianist Izumi Kimura and drummer/percussionist Gerry Hemingway's debut duo album, as in-the-moment intent, precision and intricacy course through their dialogues. No strangers to one another, they first played as duo in 2016, and then in a trio with Barry Guy on Illuminated Silence (Fundacja Sluchaj, 2019). Compositional credits are shared, though the structures are really frames ...

Album Review

Izumi Kimura & Cora Venus Lunny: Invisible Resistances

Read "Invisible Resistances" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
January 25, 2023

Take two of contemporary music's most versatile improvising musicians, give them free reign to play and something of real worth is likely to arise. That is the philosophy of Farpoint Recordings, an Irish label founded by Anthony Kelly and David Stalling in 2004. Their trust in pianist Izumi Kimura and violinist/viola player Cora Venus Lunny is well founded. Fearless performers both, they work in a wide variety of improvised, genre-fluid settings that draw variously from folk, jazz and beyond. On ...

Album Review

Izumi Kimura, Cora Venus Lunny, Anthony Kelly: Folding

Read "Folding" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
July 14, 2021

Inspired by environmental sounds in the townlands surrounding Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, Folding brings together Irish sound artist Anthony Kelly and two of Ireland's preeminent contemporary musicians, Yokohama-born pianist Izumi Kimura and violinist Cora Venus Lunny, reunited here following their memorable performance at Improvised Music Company's Ban Bam festival in 2017. The song titles reflect the bucolic nature of this project, though there is plenty of passion in Kimura and Lunny's interplay. With his pristine recordings of the sea, wind, ...

Album Review

Izumi Kimura, Barry Guy, Gerry Hemingway: Illuminated Silence

Read "Illuminated Silence" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
April 3, 2019

Although Illuminated Silence is nominally billed as a trio of equals—and, musically speaking, it is just that—it was Japanese pianist Izumi Kimura's lead that brought long-standing musical collaborators Barry Guy and Gerry Hemingway together in Dublin for this live date at St. Ann's Church. Kimura is well known in Ireland—her home for over twenty years—as a brilliant technician and a fearless improviser, and it will come as no surprise to her admirers that Kimura more than holds her own with ...