Kyoto mon amour: East-West Conversation in Real Time
A drummer and clarinet player meeting koto and bass in Kyoto, listening hard to each other.
This album arrived quietly in 2017, the kind of record that found its audience through word-of-mouth rather than fanfare. It's a meeting between Eric Schaefer, an American drummer based in Europe, and 梅津和時, a Japanese clarinetist known for free improvisation, with 菊地奈緒子 on koto and John Eckhardt on bass. What makes it distinct is how seriously it takes the conversation between jazz thinking and Japanese string tradition without pretending they're the same language. Schaefer doesn't play over the koto; he listens into it. The clarinet weaves through rather than dominates. This is a quartet that moves slowly, lets silence work, and treats each phrase like it matters.
The recording captures something specific about how musicians behave when they're genuinely uncertain where a piece will go. There's no obvious head, no predetermined changes—just attentive playing where the rhythm section responds to texture as much as tempo. Eckhardt's bass sits in the space between time-keeping and melodic suggestion. 菊地奈緒子's koto produces sounds that have nothing to do with chord changes yet everything to do with color and mood. The clarinet stays legible, jazz-trained but not jazz-dominated.
This isn't a genre record or a fusion showcase. It's a document of four musicians in one room, in Kyoto, without a safety net. The music justifies itself through attention and restraint rather than technical display. For listeners patient enough to sit with quiet intensity and uncertain harmonies, it rewards that patience.
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