Misha Mengelberg / Sabu Toyozumi: The Analects Of Confucius

Come for the music of Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg, and stay for Sabu Toyozumi. Or perhaps you are here for the Japanese drummer—the first non-American invited into the ranks of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM)—and are thrilled to hear him engage in a distinctly Japanese take on the New Dutch Swing. Either way, The Analects of Confucius, a newly unearthed gem from NoBusiness Records, offers a compelling document of creative improvisation at its finest.

Recorded live at Aoshima Hall in Shizuoka City, Japan, on October 21, 2000, this is not the first meeting of Mengelberg and Toyozumi on record. Their earlier collaboration, The Untrammeled Traveler (Chap Chap, 2013), captured a 1994 performance and already hinted at the extraordinary chemistry between them.

A participant in the Fluxus art movement—like Peter Brötzmann and Ryoko Ono—Mengelberg was known for his mischievous intellect and deep roots in jazz history. His music channels Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington through a deconstructed, often playful, Cecil Taylor-esque lens.

The concert opens with the nearly 40-minute "My Guru MM," an expansive, ever-shifting soundscape. The first two minutes are a whimsical dance of piano flourishes, cymbal strikes and buzzing brushwork. Mengelberg then steps aside, leaving Toyozumi to solo for nearly 14 minutes—a tribute as much as an improvisational exploration. When the pianist returns, playing spare and deliberate phrases, Toyozumi responds with bursts of speed and sudden accents, spurring Mengelberg into motion.

"Song for AMY" is a brief, introspective solo piano piece that elegantly blends Monk-like angularity with hints of classical formalism. The duo reconvenes for "teremakashi to forest of KEYAGU," perhaps the performance's most dynamic exchange. Here, they channel the wild, often humorous energy of Mengelberg's longstanding duo with Han Bennink. The piece begins as a percussive skirmish, slips into a blues motif, shapeshifts into a folk melody, then unravels into a free-form march.

Their encore—an abbreviated take on Monk's "Off Minor"—is a fitting closer. True to form, they disassemble the composition not with irreverence but with care, preserving its contours and tonal fragments, treating them as raw materials for a final, joyous musical dance.

The Analects of Confucius captures two master improvisers in dialogue, fusing intellect and instinct, history and innovation, chaos and structure—all in real time. It is a fascinating addition to the ongoing excavation of the global free jazz underground.