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Jazz Articles about Mamiko Watanabe
Santi Debriano & Arkestra Bembe: Ashanti
by Jack Bowers
Panama-born bassist Santi Debriano's Arkestra Bembe is a nonet whose centerpiece is the bembe music of west Africa. During the Coronavirus pandemic, Debriano began hosting weekly bembes (musical celebrations) in the basement of his Staten Island, New York home, gradually assembling a group of musicians who would comprise the Arkestra and perform Debriano's compositions and arrangements. The result is Ashanti, an impressive studio recording whose framework is jazz but whose heart and soul are clearly in bembe. ...
read moreMamiko Watanabe at Fat Cat's, NYC
by Greg Henry Waters
Mamiko Watanabe Fat Cat Club New York City, New YorkNovember 7, 2007 Mamiko Watanabe is a wonderful jazz pianist, who is simply fun to watch in performance. She is a little woman--probably no more than 98 pounds but certainly 98 pounds of dynamite! It was Lyn Christie, a string bassist who once performed with Chick Corea, to whom I owe a phrase “not afraid to be original. Mamiko is such a person. She ...
read moreMamiko Watanabe: One After Another
by Terrell Kent Holmes
With the release of One After Another, add Mamiko Watanabe to the list of talented jazz pianists that have come out of Japan in recent years. Watanabe composed all of the songs on this impressive debut and they show a strong, fully developed hard bop sensibility. Watanabe's composing MO is to start off a song with a strong theme or head, as a sort of attention-grabbing mechanism, then to pull it back to where it becomes an exploratory vehicle for ...
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