1977 · Album
Meditation Among Us
Recorded July 1977 · Kitty Records · Personnel: Milford Graves (drums, percussion, piano); Kaoru Abe (alto and sopranino saxophones); Mototeru Takagi (tenor saxophone); Toshinori Kondo (trumpet, alto horn); Toshiyuki Tsuchitori (drums, percussion)
Graves and the Japanese Players in Flight
The blowing intensity is over the top, as the Japanese players attempt to match his intensity.
When Milford Graves landed in Japan in the summer of 1977, he brought his unmistakable percussion vocabulary into contact with musicians who were hungry to match his energy. Recorded during a visit with dancer Min Tanaka, Meditation Among Us captures something rare — not an American master teaching a lesson, but genuine peers trading ideas at full volume. The album didn't become a canonical reference the way some early Graves sessions did, but it found its audience among listeners willing to follow him into territory where jazz conventions dissolve into pure rhythmic combustion. Thom Jurek's AllMusic review gave it four stars and zeroed in on the core dynamic: Graves' blowing intensity pushed his Japanese bandmates — Kaoru Abe on alto and sopranino saxophones, Mototeru Takagi on tenor, Toshinori Kondo on trumpet and alto horn, and Toshiyuki Tsuchitori on drums and percussion — into matching his velocity without losing their own voices. The results are extraordinary. On tracks like "Response," Graves moves between percussion and piano, his approach to the keyboard as relentlessly rhythmic as his work on drums. David Grundy, writing in Artforum, heard "multiphonic squalls, as if every rhythm under the sun were sounding at the same time." That accuracy matters. This isn't fusion or crossover. It's free players at maximum intensity, recording on a small Japanese label (Kitty Records) with no commercial pressure, which is probably why it swings as hard as it does.
Who's playing
阿部薫alto saxophone
高木元輝tenor saxophone
Milford Gravespercussion
土取利行percussion
近藤等則tenor horn / alto horn
