Review of Jazz Channel Presents Keiko Matsui, The

Introduction

After my wife, music has to be one of my great passions and there is nothing I like more than discovering a new artist. While, I have a substantial Jazz collection, I had never come across Keiko Matsui until this DVD arrived in my letterbox courtesy of the good people at DVD Reviewer.

According to the All Music Guide, she is a top Japanese Contemporary Jazz artist with New Age and Fusion influences. While I enjoy many artists that would be branded as Contemporary Jazz (Bob James, Earl Klugh, Acoustic Alchemy), the genre as a whole has a tendency towards blandness and with New Age thrown into the mix, I began to have concerns about Keiko.

Video

“The Jazz Channel Presents ...” series comes from a US cable TV channel (BET) and is filmed on digital video. As such, the 4:3 image is of a high quality. No complaints.

The venue is the BET studio in Washington and has been arranged in a Jazz Club format, with the audience seated at tables. The performance is restrained with lighting used sparingly but well. It’s fine but I guess it starts to look boring after a while.

Audio

In common with most Image Entertainment DVDs, this has a dts 5.1 track to complement the expected DD 5.1 and DD 2.0. There is little to choose between the dts and DD 5.1 tracks with the dts having slightly more detail and definition. The DD 2.0 comes off worst sounding a bit loose and flabby in comparison.

While the dts 5.1 track is sounds good, it is nowhere near the best I have heard. It is really a stereo mix with some ambience thrown to the rears. The music itself might have a part to play here. It is polite, passionless music and it is presented in a polite passionless fashion.

Features

The only extra on the disk is an interview with Keiko. This doesn’t work as well as some of the other Jazz Channel disks (like Lou Rawls), largely because Keiko doesn’t seem very comfortable with English. Not her fault by any means but it does leave the interview quite stilted and not particularly enjoyable for the viewer.

Conclusion

Music is a very personal thing and, personally, I didn’t enjoy this very much. I found it all pretty bland and uninteresting. Largely synthesiser based, Keiko’s music tends to focus on mood rather than melody and, for me, it all came across as sterile and passionless.

One of the pleasures of Jazz is in the interplay between the various musicians – the spontaneity and the give and take. This was missing in Keiko’s performance. Sure, she was technically proficient and her backing musicians were all good players but it just didn’t gel. Rather than acting as a coherent unit, I got the impression that her sidemen were laying down a rhythm track and she was playing over it. Now, I’m not suggesting that she was grandstanding or selfish, just that there was no interaction.

The music was generally dull and faceless, often little more than keyboard sketches, influenced variously by Jazz, Classical (some strong Bach touches) and Pop and it didn’t work for me. I though it was cold and passionless.

The best pieces were the rather lively “Bridge Over The Stars” where the band managed to create a rather good Jazz groove and the pretty solo piano of “Forever, Forever”.

If you are a fan, it’s a worthwhile disk. If not, it probably won’t convert you.