Naoko Terai Jazz Violinist

[MarkBouquet]

I did a search of Maestronet and found no results for "Naoko Terai." I was just sitting here listening to some CD's and wondering why she's so little known here in the U.S. She's a Japanese jazz violinist, born 1967, started playing the violin at age four, and decided that jazz was her means to express herself. Most of my Terai CD's are from between the years 1998 and 2005. Almost all of them were made for Japanese release with most of the liner notes in Japanese. She made a CD in collaboration with Lee Ritenour in 2000 which is a bit towards the popular jazz idiom, but really beautiful. She made another CD with the French jazz accordion player Richard Galliano. I just ordered another CD that was listed as being from 2015, so I guess she's still active and I can't wait to hear what she's doing now.

In contrast to many jazz violinists her intonation is exquisite, and her phrasing is always disciplined and intelligent, without any cliche' or decorative but inessential flourishes a' la Grappelli. If you're interested in jazz, search for her and you'll find lots of videos. In my humble opinion you should.

[Kev Chanot]

Perfect timing Mark,I have been searching for Jazz violinists to inspire my daughter who is learning to play.Looked at a couple of youtube clips-Very impressive.I shall watch more when I have time.

[palousian]

Well, I can understand why classical players like her--she plays "jazz" like it was Brahms.  She does have some considerable violin skills, but that shlurpy vibrato sounds all wrong for jazz to my ears, and I can't imagine that she can play the blues, which (if you're going to play jazz) you had better get a handle on.  She may be improvising, but it sounds like she has prepared a chart carefully with all the phrasings and fingerings--reading the notes of a written-out jazz performance is NOT jazz, even if it has "exquisite" intonation and "disciplined and intelligent" phrasing.  It is true that a great improvisor will play to the edge and there may be moments that a classical player would consider flawed, involving less-than-exquisite intonation and less control perhaps, but the reward for this is soul.  A month or so ago, someone posted a video of Anne Akiko Meyers playing some Gershwin.  That's what this sounds like to me.     

 

Grappelli was a special case--he didn't really play the blues either--but he was steeped in the improvisation tradition of so-called "Gypsy" music, and because he was a genius he pulled it all together into a unique style.  This performer is not in his league.  My two cents.  

[DGV]

I have feel similarly.  Her playing doesn't sound jazzy enough.  It sounds more like pop to my ears.

[DR. S]

You guys are crazy.  Listen to more of her stuff, She is a legit jazz violinist and a vey good one at that.  Lots of improv going on here.  You don;t have to sound like Stephan Grapelli to play jazz.  Nothing wrong with a good rich tone.   By the way I know some people who played with Grapelli, he rehearsed and mapped out his 'improvs' before every performance to the frustration of some guest artists who wanted to truly go out and wing it.

[DGV]

You guys are crazy.  Listen to more of her stuff, She is a legit jazz violinist and a vey good one at that.  Lots of improv going on here.  You don;t have to sound like Stephan Grapelli to play jazz.  Nothing wrong with a good rich tone.   By the way I know some people who played with Grapelli, he rehearsed and mapped out his 'improvs' before every performance to the frustration of some guest artists who wanted to truly go out and wing it.

 

Why don't you post some videos of hers that are truly jazzy?

[DGV]

That sounds extremely condescending. 

 

I didn't hear jazz in that particular video. That is all. That doesn't mean I think she sucks or she doesn't play jazz.  Maybe I haven't searched hard enough but since I don't like jazz violin as much as saxophone, the burden is on her supporters to post something a bit more mind-blowing.

 

BTW, there are people who posted on MN about how they don't care for certain renowned violinists' playing. Are they hiding their envy and resentment?

[ctanzio]

The rhythm differences between the melody, the bass line and the chord changes sounded like standard jazz to me. As a young man I visited more than a few jazz clubs in New Orleans. There was a strong tradition of taking popular, slow ballads and "improvising" a jazz version using rhythm and chord change "rules" that sounded just like that video.

 

Beautiful music. Thanks for posting it.

[MarkBouquet]

"There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind."

Duke Ellington

As the OP on this topic I just wanted to say that I think Naoko Terai's music falls firmly in the good category, regardless of any distinctions about what is or isn't jazz. I could post more links to prove my point, but the beautiful link that Connie posted will lead you to many others. If you're interested, track them down yourself, and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do.

[jezzupe]

Perfect timing Mark,I have been searching for Jazz violinists to inspire my daughter who is learning to play.Looked at a couple of youtube clips-Very impressive.I shall watch more when I have time.

might I suggest Lili Haydn 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APP6-4i_pR4

[jezzupe]

I think Jazz for violin can be and is a wider spectrum of "Jazz" than other instrument interpretations' within the genre. Here is Llli at the Monteux Jazz Festival playing with Parliament

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLCFTbsNLqc

 

What I like is that she's not afraid to add effects and amplification and over all is a very natural improv player

[martin swan]

Wow: 

 

Wonder if she's not that well known because her management hasn't promoted enough venues in English? 

Who cares if it's "JAZZ" or not - it's a very distinctive musical voice. It reminds me most of Sevdah music, very melancholic ....

And a bit of a hint of Diana Krall, where control, restraint, and sublime intonation ARE the vibe!

But all in all it's probably best to enjoy it on its own terms and not ask for it to be Coltrane.

[martin swan]

Maybe this gives more of a sense of whether she might be Jazz or not ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=192&v=2Bl7YFHL6nA

[jezzupe]

Maybe this gives more of a sense of whether she might be Jazz or not ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=192&v=2Bl7YFHL6nA

Well whatever it is, she's very good. Again I think that "Jazz" is a very broad spectrum. I call this "smooth" Jazz. I think that there is lots of room for interpretation and that many "Jazz" purist's would find this not very "Jazzy" in the playing is so "clean" and that her tone is rather "classical" related to the "sound" she projects along with the voice of her fiddle. I wonder what she plays on?

"

[palousian]

I don't know, Martin, it doesn't sound all that different violin-wise from this to me (also beautifully played, IMHO)...

 

 

Jazz is a complex tradition on the violin because many of the early players were classically-trained, and seem to be in a parallel universe from players who came out of the American fiddling traditions (which happens to be my preference, stylistically).  But jazz is an oral tradition, and many of the early greats were surrounded by master jazz musicians and absorbed the tradition from them--they had to make the violin stand up to horns, they had to play the blues, they had to respect the jazz tradition, which itself owes more to African-American traditions of string playing (including fiddle) than most jazz musicians realize.  Most important--they had to swing!  I think there is a lot of room for "fusion" where a player from one tradition explores another tradition (I think Grappelli is a brilliant example of someone who did this), but the issue for me is respect--you had better study the masters of the tradition and demonstrate that you have absorbed their lessons, or you aren't playing jazz.  So to my ears, Ms. Terai doesn't sound like she has done this, and I am not much taken with her solos, but of course this is just my opinion.  Flawlessly-played--absolutely--but they just don't do much for me musically. 

 

I don't think "Stuff" Smith gets very far out of first position in this funky-quality video, but this is jazz violin...in my opinion, of course...

 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ud5d_stuff-smith-jazz-party-1958_music

[l33tplaya]

Jezzupe, that's it exactly: Naoko is playing smooth jazz, and quite far from "straight ahead" jazz.  It's music, it's jazz; it's also what we as kids made fun of my dad for listening to...too "pop" for my tastes.  Similar to what used to be "the WAVE-KTWV" radio station in SoCal (for those MNers not following the very important style makers here  ) was derided as "easy listening."

 

My favorite jazz violinist remains Joe Venuti:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_43N2573hvQ  

 

He still manages to throw in a classical quote or two at the end.  He was also known for taking apart and reversing his bow so he could play all 4 strings at once for perfect quad stops.  Grappelli and Django (Reinhardt not Django Burgess  ) owed much of their style to Joe.  At 81, he rocked Dick Cavett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbjNKeIjMD8&feature=player_detailpage . Here he is with his first guitarist, Eddie Lang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pyq0Pk_K3A&feature=player_detailpage Joe even played with Grappelli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cMtM4vHh61Q

 

Lilly Hadyn:  I met her when she was in high school.  Her mom, a good comedian in her own right, was Lenny Bruce's paramour... Lilly used to perform on the pier here, with a friend/artist, who would paint on these giant screens to her improv melodies.  At the end of each selection, the screens would be erased and reset, disappointing many.  it's good to see how Lilly has progressed - thank you for sharing!

[jezzupe]

Jezzupe, that's it exactly: Naoko is playing smooth jazz, and quite far from "straight ahead" jazz.  It's music, it's jazz; it's also what we as kids made fun of my dad for listening to...too "pop" for my tastes.  Similar to what used to be "the WAVE-KTWV" radio station in SoCal (for those MNers not following the very important style makers here  ) was derided as "easy listening."

 

My favorite jazz violinist remains Joe Venuti:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_43N2573hvQ  

 

He still manages to throw in a classical quote or two at the end.  He was also known for taking apart and reversing his bow so he could play all 4 strings at once for perfect quad stops.  Grappelli and Django (Reinhardt not Django Burgess  ) owed much of their style to Joe.  At 81, he rocked Dick Cavett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbjNKeIjMD8&feature=player_detailpage . Here he is with his first guitarist, Eddie Lang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pyq0Pk_K3A&feature=player_detailpage Joe even played with Grappelli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cMtM4vHh61Q

 

Lilly Hadyn:  I met her when she was in high school.  Her mom, a good comedian in her own right, was Lenny Bruce's paramour... Lilly used to perform on the pier here, with a friend/artist, who would paint on these giant screens to her improv melodies.  At the end of each selection, the screens would be erased and reset, disappointing many.  it's good to see how Lilly has progressed - thank you for sharing!

Venuti's a fantastic player. Jazz is, as I said, quite a broad style, and has many genres in the genre, so there is no "true" jazz, but there certainly is more "traditional" jazz. Beyond playing, the "tone" of the instrument chosen has lots to do with how we interpret what we hear. Listen to the difference in tone between Venuti and Terai, very different sound.

 

Lili is a great player and all around cool chick. She's played with so many greats, Sting, Plant/Page, U2, Clinton and many others, shes a very socially aware person who is involved in many projects and continues to be one of the hottest session/tour players out there. She's been a very nice person to me who is diligent with communications and just an over all wonderful person, She takes delivery of my Cat Fiddle at the end of the month, so I'm very excited about that as she's exactly the type of player that I envision playing my instruments.

 

I posted the video because Kev said he was looking for inspiration for his daughter. I really can't think of anyone more inspirational female player wise, as far as ability and the entire package goes. She's a very natural player .

[Stephen Faulk]

There's no such thing as smooth jazz. Her playing is is technically fantastic, kind of robotic, and marketable, but not very interesting in the context of jazz. If I had kid into jazz I'd give them a couple copies of the Real Book in treble clef and send them to study with an alto saxophonist who can play really good. This woman can play her ass off, but it's like listening through molass-ass.

[Stephen Faulk]

IMHO this is what she best at, the way jazz and tango meet, the territory first mapped out between players like Gerry Mulligan and Astor Piazzola. Her sound and harmonic sense fit this stuff very tightly. The problem I have is that her articulation sounds like she is constantly playing a super high octane cadenza from a romantic concerto, but that kind of feeling works really well with the jazz-tango intersection. 

 

I also disagree with the notion that she could not play blues or has not listened deeply into the tradition, I hear phasing that comes out of swing era horn playing, through 40's be bop and 50's modal work and spacial thinking that comes out of various member Miles Davis' bands in the early 60's. That space led to Weather Report style Jazz - Rock fusion and she's absorbed all that stuff, you can hear it. Let's more think about the context of Jean Luc Ponty's pioneering work in the 1960's and drop the references to Grappelli, which don't really apply to her.  I think she's gone pretty deep, but she's wrapped it up tighter than it needs be for my taste. It's typical in my listening experience for Japanese players to be be ultra well studied and informed by deep traditional understanding, but to remain really tightly controlled in the basic approach to the music. What I like about Ponty's early work, which in my opinion is super underrated work, is that he extracts risk and articulation from the saxophonists who were important at the end of the fifties and takes jazz violin away from Grappelli and pushes it forward. His early work is open ended, full of risk and transfers a modern post be-bop sax players sensibility to the violin. Ponty' took Coltrane's lines and transplanted them to the violin, he did it without scaring people. Terai's work has that factored in, it goes past Grappelli via that street Ponty paved out through jazz fusion. I think people don't talk about Ponty enough or kind of sideline his playing as too strange, but what he did was important because he made it possible for a violinist in jazz to assimilate the language of the modern saxophone and that puts the violinist on the same potential level with the sax or trumpet as soloist.  That said I think her place in music is much higher level than Pop or the 'smooth jazz' thing, ( smooth jazz is a label I contest but that is another story.) I think it has to be seen in the context of Weather Report and Ponty and her approach to jazz after those artists, Grappelli not so much, different animal. In the jazz-rock fusion territory there is lots of room for more accessible music that I would not call Pop, but somehow it filters through to audiences that don't get down with harder jazz. 

 

 

For comparison the other violinist is Ikuko Kawai playing the same Piazolla work Libertango, ( dig the pianist really) basically the same age, but even more classical. A good player, a bit too "show bizzy" for me, ( milking the thousand yard sexy stare) but money is money. By comparison she is doing less and playing more loose, but it works with the tango jazz concept. But I doubt she could go toe to toe with a top jazz saxophonist and match them lick for lick. A top jazz player would be able to do that, I think Terai is more that kind of player even though she is under a lot of control harmonically and otherwise. I wish she would break out harmonically more.  Kawai is more an all around player, who can play jazz to a fair level, but Terai would seriously smoke her ass in a cutting contest. 

 

Terai could cut loose, I think, but she's mapped out a zone that is safe for making a living and really deep listening US jazz afcionados will only take that so far. In her chops and understanding of the history of jazz I hear deep study, but filtered through a classical kind of base as far as articulation and tone. Not an unpleasant player to listen to in the contexts she is really good at, but slightly predictable and that is where I fall out after 15 minutes at a show. I want a jazz player to take me to the limit and edges of musical space.  It would be fun to hear her play with a bass player after a show, after she's had three martinis and does not give a shit and just wants to play outside.

 

In jazz there are "inside players" and "outside players", that was the old way of explaining it, and she's an inside player, which is no crime. 

 

 

 

 

[Stephen Faulk]

Libertango again, this is another Japanese violinist who is popular and I like his "Japfro" hair. He plays the melody more straight and cuts open for 30 seconds near 4 minutes. A great band, aside from guitarist who plays exactly the kind of mind numbing scalar schlock I can't stand to hear. 

 

This guy plays with guts, he does not go far out, but he takes the basic melody material and works with it profoundly. He can probably play really crazy stuff, but he's put together a band that can work in his country. If you find examples where he solos more he's a fine player and no doubt could play tunes called on the band stand at random and improvise without a worked out solo. 

 

I think all this work comes through Ponty in some way or another and of course listening to Piazolla who's music really works well with bowed string improv. Grappelli line is different and after Ponty jazz violin went with Coltrane line, and other horn player line from that time, Yusef Lateef, Dolphy etc. and developed that. 

 

There are also many more good violinists in Japan who play jazz, these are just the ones that get on TV.  

 

 

[jezzupe]

There's no such thing as smooth jazz. Her playing is is technically fantastic, kind of robotic, and marketable, but not very interesting in the context of jazz. If I had kid into jazz I'd give them a couple copies of the Real Book in treble clef and send them to study with an alto saxophonist who can play really good. This woman can play her ass off, but it's like listening through molass-ass.

Not to be contradictory, but if you go to utube and type "smooth jazz" before you even finish typing "smooth"  smooth jazz comes up as the second choice. And then once you click it, well there's hundreds of "smooth jazz" choices...So according to the world, there is "smooth jazz" , but alas, I don't make up the names and terms, I just write the songs I sing  I really like rough jazz better, or moderately textured at least,  kind of an orange peel jazz   ....Well whatever she is, she's very good.

[Stephen Faulk]

I know, I know, but when you hear a canned radio station announcer say "Smoooooooooooth Jaaaaaasssssss" and then they play the recording by John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, it. is.  just.  so. wrong.  Insulting really. 

 

Or the other label I hate more is "Dinner Jazz" ~ F that.  

 

It's the same as robo-classical stations calling Mozart "Light Classical" ---Arrrgghhhh!

 

Anyway sorry about my over bearing enthusiasm, I was a coffee casualty yesterday. 

[martin swan]

Hi Stephen,

Really enjoying your trip around Japanese TV jazz violinists! All the examples you've cited are serious musicians doing interesting things very well. 

Although the least showy, I am drawn to Taro Hakase. There is a sort of charge to his sound, even when playing simply. He is magnetic. You also feel that it's really him, and that backstage with a few drinks he wouldn't be that different.

Ikuko Kawai is intriguing - the fiddle sound (sort of piezo pickup with zero high frequency content) is more individual, but somehow I'm always waiting .... she seems to have more of an Eastern aesthetic than the other two, which I like.

Naoko Terai - Paizzola is perfect for her, kind of precious and high drama at the same time. I am totally convinced by her solo in this performance, and while she's not my thing I admire her. 

[jezzupe]

I know, I know, but when you hear a canned radio station announcer say "Smoooooooooooth Jaaaaaasssssss" and then they play the recording by John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, it. is.  just.  so. wrong.  Insulting really. 

 

Or the other label I hate more is "Dinner Jazz" ~ F that.  

 

It's the same as robo-classical stations calling Mozart "Light Classical" ---Arrrgghhhh!

 

Anyway sorry about my over bearing enthusiasm, I was a coffee casualty yesterday. 

103.7....booop, doodoop, doop, be do doop

[DR. S]

 

Keep watching past the thematic expostition.  She gets going with some great improv.  Perhaps my admiration for her has to do with her ability to do something I always wished I could do.  I tend to respond with admiration rather than envy. I have tried hard to shed my life of negative emotions like envy and jealousy, life's too short for negativity.  And besides, anything I failed to achieve is only the result of my own decisions and choices, no one elses.