Kazuko Baba Trio Releases "ai" on Playscape Recordings

The power of love, it would seem, is central to the work of Kazuko Baba, pianist-composer. Above and beyond the reference in the title ("ai" means “love" in Japanese) and the different phases of romance that the composer says spawned each of her tunes, the sublime force is chief among the things required if one is to do as Baba has done in the decade or so since she came under the spell of jazz in her native Japan. Within that time, she gave up classical studies, went to work in a local jazz club and then took the ambitious step of moving to New York City to learn more and make her way into the competitive hotbed that is the New York jazz scene.

Today, this may not seem as unusual as it did four decades ago, when the first Japanese natives began finding their way into jazz education programs in the U.S., but the final outcome, an album that augurs the rise of a rapidly developing pianist while building upon Baba's study at the New School in New York, is indeed a signification of an ardor that goes beyond the ordinary. On another level, one might also say that Baba's indifference to the risks involved in such a journey recalls the questioning lyric from the bridge of “All The Way," the one standard she has chosen for Ai's program: “Who knows/ where the road/ will lead us?" it asks. “Only a fool can say."

This CD suggests several ways for the listener to begin contemplating the charmed roads ahead for Baba. “Sacrifice," the opening track, begins auspiciously and builds from there, concluding with the kind of racing choruses and climactic crescendos that are almost surprising in their capacity to intensify the opening theme while adhering to it. Baba's writing is marked by a simplicity and fire that is perhaps easy to explain once you consider that she studied with veteran pianist Michele Rosewoman, also a composer who can do astonishing things economically. “The moment I heard Michele, I knew she was the teacher I was looking for," Baba says. “Her playing had this thing that was difficult but was not really what you'd call 'out,' and that appealed to me. After awhile she started pushing me to write because she said it would help with improvising and other things. I probably wouldn't have done it,or at least not as soon, otherwise."

--K. Leander Williams