Tadao Sawai - Jazz Rock Koto (1973)

Hey there. Quick one for today. Tadao Sawai was a renowned koto player - which is a curved Japanese stringed instrument. He was active from the 1960s until his death in 1997. The album we have here today is titled Jazz Rock Koto and was released in 1973 on RCA. 

Joining Sawai we have have his wife, and fellow koto player, Kazue Sawai, saxophonist Jake Concepcion, trumpeters Takehisa Suzuki and Kenji Yoshida and trombonist Tadataka Nakazawa. We also have Norio Maeda on keyboards, Hozan Yamamoto on the shakuhachi, Sadanori Nakamure on guitar, Tatsuro Takimoto on bass, Osamu Nakajima on percussion with Takeshi Inomata on drums. The famed drummer is what led me to this album. This post is a pre-cursor to an Inomata post I'll try to do next. Amazing jazz-rock stuff in his catalog. 

12 relatively quick tunes on this one. Impressive musicianship from the entire group throughout. I really dig the sound of the koto and the shakuhachi (Japanese flute). I would call this album jazz-rock (obviously it's in the title) with some funky mixtures. The koto and the shakuhachi also add nice elements of traditional Japanese music. 

Favorites here would be "Soran Bushi", "Hietsuki Bushi" and "Itsuki No Komori Uta." Although "Hokkai Bon Uta" and "Kiso Bushi" are also stellar, with the latter maybe being the best tune overall. Pretty cool album.