Shunzo Ohno: Live at Joe's Pub

A string section? In Joe's Pub? Strange as that may seem, it is clearly the case on veteran trumpeter Shunzo Ohno's latest album, recorded Live at Joe's Pub in New York City. The seven-member section, led by Ohno's daughter, cellist Sasha Ohno, is not mere window dressing, as it plays a sizable role on every one of the album's eight numbers and is, in fact, the only voice heard on Ohno's gossamer "Firefly."

What better way to get the strings in gear than with "Going Home," the largo from Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, written during his visit to America in the early 1890s and better known as "Goin' Home." Ohno wrote the other seven tunes, closing with his award-winning theme, "Musashi." Together, "Going Home" and "Musashi" consume more than twenty-two minutes of the album's 57-minute playing time.

The problem with Live at Joe's Pub lies not so much with the music as with the Pub's abominable acoustics. Whether accidentally or deliberately, Ohno and the others often seem to be performing in an airplane hangar or some other bizarre venue that engulfs their sound and shackles it in reverb and other unwelcome side effects that make one want to cry "oh, no!" The audience, too, seems distant, as if it were observing the concert from some far-flung venue that is nowhere near Joe's Pub.

As Ohno surely heard the finished product before its release, one has to assume that measure of resonance was what he had in mind, so the onus is on him. While it is hard to envision how the album may have sounded without those burdensome special effects, an uneducated guess is that it would have been appreciably enhanced. But it is what it is, and the listener must decide whether that is more agreeable than annoying.

Japanese-born Ohno, whose long and impressive resume includes two Grammy awards, time with Art Blakey's famed Jazz Messengers and a solid reputation as a composer and arranger, bears the lion's share of responsibility for the success or failure of Live at Joe's Pub. While it may indeed live long and prosper, the chances of that happening don't seem to be especially good, at least not from this vantage point.

Shunzo Ohno · 07 - Shunzo Ohno - Dreamers