Dan Grunebaum

As a music enthusiast in Tokyo, chances are at some point you’ll come across Seigen Ono. A musician and composer of jazz and Brazilian-influenced music, Ono in his alternate guise as studio wiz has worked with the likes of Miles Davis, and has his hand in everything from commercial soundtracks to fashion shows to art installations.

So when the opportunity arose to interview Ono and experience his new album Maria and Maria in Super Audio 5.1 surround sound, I headed down to his private Saidera Paradiso studio in the backstreets of tony Jingumae.

After finding my way there on a blistering Indian summer day, I was ushered by a young assistant into the dark cool of his basement studio, where the strains of the record could already be heard echoing around the lofty room. Recorded in one session in New York City, Maria and Maria can roughly be categorized as jazz, but is also imbued with elements of experimental, ambient and Brazilian music.

For the recording, Kobe native Ono called on an all-
star cast of friends, including noted downtown players like guitarist Marc Ribot, saxophonist John Zorn and cellist Jane Scarpantoni. “Since 1985, I’ve been involved with a lot of New York musicians,” he explains in his rapid if broken English. “I’ve never lived there but I often visit… and got to know a lot of musicians through the [famous club] Knitting Factory.

“The point of the recording session was to get the musicians together in a room and do it in one take. The room was about the size of a volleyball court, so we had to position them to achieve the right balance. The recording was made from the room sound: nobody went line-in to the mixing board or even used headsets. You are hearing exactly how the instruments were set up.”

Through Ono’s audiophile sound system, the album feels preternaturally live, to the point where you can hear the musicians shuffling about in their seats. Ono’s quest is to transfer the live experience to recorded media as faithfully as possible. “For me music is a live experience. If I want to capture sound I want it to have the same quality. You should be able to hear movement. If you record music without environment, it’s like a picture without the full experience.”

Why did he choose the unusual title for the album? “There’s a simple and silly answer,” he says with a laugh. “When I compose music, I write down a lot of ideas. Often I don’t title them. Some people just use numbers to label compositions like ‘M6,’ or ‘M tragic’ for a film scene, but instead of using ‘M,’ I use ‘Maria.’ Also it’s the most popular name [in] the world—my older daughter and her mother have the name, so I can make presents to all of them.”

With moods ranging from the reverb-drenched nostalgia of “She is She” to the ambient, off-kilter experimentalism of “Maria 5” to the brooding, aching beauty of “Dragonfish” to the sprightly tunefulness of “Maria 3,” Maria and Maria would make the perfect soundtrack for a quiet Sunday afternoon at home, or a chat with friends at a mod Tokyo café.

Producer, label owner, composer and musician, the 49-year-old Ono is one of a number of figures including frequent collaborator, Comme des Garcon fashion designer Rei Kakakubo, to bring sophisticated contemporary Japanese culture to worldwide attention since the ’80s. Using connections established with musicians in New York and Sao Paulo, Ono’s first concerts were at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, and he didn’t actually make his Japan debut as a bandleader until 2000.

Ono is upbeat on Japan’s jazz scene, which is by any measure still one of the world’s strongest. “Brazilian and jazz are very popular in Japan,” he says. “Sometimes I see very bad groups that can play really quick, but without grace or a groove. Yet there are many talented young musicians.”
With his own busy schedule of composing and producing, including most recently the creation of his shortest piece of music ever at one second for an art installation at a Seoul museum, Ono doesn’t have a lot of time to go out. But when he does, it’s not to marquee clubs like the Blue Note or big events such as the Tokyo Jazz festival, but to his local watering hole.

“I try to go out to interesting things, but I’m too busy.” There’s a small Brazilian club called Praca Onze in Aoyama,” he says fondly. “It’s the oldest Brazilian bar in town. Tuesday through Saturday they have live music. I like to just hang out or dance if the music is good. Sometimes I jam with the musicians there or invite them to my Blue Note shows.”

Maria and Maria is available on Saidera Records.

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