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JAZZ IMPROV MAGAZINE REVEIW
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by Bill Donaldson
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Sumi Tonooka
LONG AGO TODAY. ARC 2116. www.SumiTonooka.com. Be the Dance, All of You, The Clinging, Dreaming of Tibet, Quantum Question, Long Ago Today, Renewal, Morrocan Daze, Just for Now, Nami’s Song.
PERSONNEL: Sumi Tonooka, piano; Rufus Reid, bass; Bob Braye, drums.
By Bill Donaldson
It’s puzzling that Sumi Tonooka isn’t more widely known after a decades-long jazz career. She should be. Print versions of The AllMusic Guide to Jazz and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz do not mention her, and The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD includes but one reference (for a CD on which she accompanies Bobby Zankel). Tonooka does stay busy with performances, composing for films or recordings, and teaching at colleges in the Hudson Valley. Despite the fearlessness of her playing and the depths of her talent, Tonooka has not recorded an album for a decade, and perhaps her low profile results from her unfortunate respite from recording activity. Nonetheless, Tonooka’s studying and practicing and musical inventions and ever-more-complex technique continue. Long Ago Today documents her present path in the musical journey that started at 13 when she heard Thelonious Monk in her native Philadelphia. Her interest heightened considerably when she worked as an 18-year-old with Marcus Belgrave and Odean Pope, as well as performing in Philly Joe Jones’ Le Grand Prix quartet. With his typical curiosity, diligence and disarming conversation throughout In the Moment: Jazz in the 1980s, Francis Davis documents Tonooka’s frustrations about obtaining a recording contract early in her career, when the major labels returned her tapes unopened or suggested promoting her talent as an exotic gimmick. Tonooka would have none of that. Instead, she concentrated on the quality of the music she crafted. The results of that determination are evident now.
On Long Ago Today, Tonooka deals with musical reminiscence, mellowed by matured insight from the wounded recollections that In the Moment includes. The CD starts with energetic inventions when “Be the Dance” alternates rolling left-hand patterns with chiming and splashing chords for harmonic fulfillment. While Tonooka’s influence by Monk is not apparent in this intriguing composition, McCoy Tyner’s certainly is. Her percussiveness and bass-clef, depth-charge accents during this six-eight romp suggest confident strength and appealing fluidity.
Tonooka’s unsurprising choice of a bassist shows not only her musical understanding of, but also her personal friendship with, Rufus Reid, who appears on all of her recordings. More surprising, and so fortunate, is her choice of drummer Bob Braye, largely overlooked by jazz journalists, as is Tonooka, despite his work with Thelonious Monk, Jackie McLean and Lee Morgan. On “All of You,” the rhythmic tightness of the trio and her kinship with the other musicians facilitate the appeal of her own arrangement, which involves unison bass lines and re-harmonization of the familiar melody, the only one on Long Ago Today which isn’t her own composition. Opening with feathery delicacy of a ruminative nature, Tonooka glides without hurry into the melody. At the repeat, and specifically at “the east west north and the south of you,” Reid moves from pedal points to unison harmonic movement and tumbling bass lines, obviously written by Tonooka, and then into light swing. The interplay begins, the switching between bass and piano, as they develop jointly the framework for the song’s interpretation through a combination of spontaneity and arrangement, two confident professionals appreciating and elaborating on each other’s ideas.
And how do Tonooka’s reminiscences affect the album? For the most part, her remaining compositions for Long Ago Today are dedicated to people who shaped her life or her music. “Quantum Question” memorializes the life of Tonooka’s father, Clarence Morris, who died six months before the recording session. Morris delegated much of the responsibility for household duties to Tonooka, including making a payment to prevent foreclosure of the family’s house, which she left at the age of 15. He also spent twenty years contemplating unfathomable mysteries involving the cosmos, and more mundanely, life, and his ponderings are represented by the two-chord framework veering between minor and major modality in a continuing tension. Tonooka seems to borrow its dissonance from Monk, though the fieriness and crispness of her right-hand improvisation are her own. In the midst of the tribute, Tonooka allows Braye to break loose with his own bristling interpretation.
The title piece, “Long Ago Today,” honors both of Tonooka’s parents, unconventional in their lifestyles and stung by unfortunate experiences throughout many of their years. Assuming her mother’s maiden name, Tonooka evokes her mother’s, Emiko’s, spirit with the calmness of a flowing single-line melody for which she is remembered, in addition to the regret for her unjust confinement as a Japanese-American (born near Seattle) in Manzinar detention camp during World War II. From the ruminative nature of the piece, Tonooka no doubt has written a very personal piece of music that expresses feelings that cannot be put into words, and in the process beauty emerges from the luxuriant sustained chords.
Tonooka looks forward as well, when she performs a ballad for her daughter, “Nami’s Song,” similar in tempo and spirit to “Long Ago Today,” the future is contained within the past that Tonooka merges by means of music. Simple and evocative, “Nami’s Song” consists of a memorable melody punctuated by prolonged accents at the repeat and in the middle of the bridge. Tonooka’s mentor and friend, Kenny Barron, receives honors as well when she includes the graceful “Just for Now,” which she wrote when she was working with Barron at Rutgers. The piece does include suggestions of Barron’s infinite variations in improvisation with close attention to touch and pronounced strength of attack. Tonooka’s propulsive composition, “Morrocan Daze,” recalls inspiration from Ghanaian hand drummer Joachim Lartey. It simultaneously provides even more proof of Tonooka’s technical facility, particularly with her left-hand pattern that governs the piece, and a powerful approach that can’t fail to affect a listener’s imagination.
Even though Long Ago Today is a personal fulfillment of deeply felt emotions, musically expressed, the more important result should be the recognition of Sumi Tonooka as a leading jazz pianist whose recordings over the past twenty years deserve close reconsideration.
Born in Philadelphia, she started piano and music instruction at the age of seven at the Settlement Music School. Her parents took her to see Thelonious Monk ‘live’ at the Aqua Lounge for her thirteenth birthday, which is when she decided to become a jazz musician. She has performed with Philly Joe Jones, Kenny Burrell, Little Jimmy Scott, Sonny Fortune, Red Rodney, Benny Golson, and David “Fathead” Newman. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Philadelphia College of Performing Arts. Her debut release as a leader, With An Open Heart (1986, Radiant Records), was the beginning of a long friendship with bassist Rufus Reid. Long Ago Today is Tonooka’s first recording as a leader in a decade. She has added to her talents scoring music for film. She’s composed over a dozen film scores. She is currently teaching piano at both Bard College and Duchess Community College in The Hudson Valley of New York.
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