Saya Saito Trio, Simple Poem - 38m 31s

Tracks & Durations

1. Simple Poem	4:24
2. A New Day	4:17
3. Prelude	2:36
4. Black Nile	4:39
5. Far Beyond	6:11
6. Words for Music Perhaps	4:33
7. Over the Rainbow	5:39
8. If I Fell for You	6:07

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Review

Simple Poem is a stunning debut.

As composer and pianist, Saya Saito reminds us that the genius of jazz is its ability to speak to the heart. Her spirit, while strong, suggests an ingenious quietude. Saya is subtle. As declaration of artistic purpose, Simple Poem speaks with an eloquence that is altogether fresh, filled with the wonder of joyous invention.

Saya understands the basic fact-that jazz is conversational, the reflection of real people expressing real feelings. Jazz is rooted in real speech, and the piano, the instrument providing the music's full grammatical range, is a vocal medium. At a young age, Saya seems to have transcended the usual concerns of technique-her technique is an established fact-and emerged with a voice of her own. As she composes, as she plays, as she weaves her spontaneously precise patterns, she speaks to us with dazzling clarity. We hear her heart prompting her hands.

I especially love the deep relaxation that informs Saya's solos, the unhurried sense of surprise. Youthful players tend to rush and over-riff, confusing jazz's heady exhilaration with egotistical hype. Saya is committed to simplicity. She allows for silences. Her musical manner is modest. She understands that underneath jazz's easy swing is the mystery of solitude. For all its gregarious chatter, jazz can be lonely. Jazz, after all, was birthed through a blue note.

We trace the birth of jazz to New Orleans, the city where Saya expatriated from her native Tokyo only a few years back. There she became a prize-winning student of piano gurus Mike Pellera and Ellis Marsalis. (Marsalis' son Jason is Saya's drummer on this disc, as in tune to her sensibilities as bassist David Pulphus.) Recently, she has played in the individual bands of Charles Neville and Aaron Neville, composing and accompanying both men while becoming a member of the larger family unit, the Neville Brothers. Her acceptance into this exclusive fellowship-the Nevilles are the premier funk/soul/jazz/R&B/reggae roots music unit on the planet--is tribute to Saya's musicianship.

Simple Poem expresses that musicianship with an essential grace. The title tune articulates the emotional theme: The subject will be beauty, plain and true. The ear will be delighted. We will think of other musicians-Erik Satie, Bill Evans-we will think of painters and poets-Henri Rousseau, e.e. cummings-but we will return to the sound of Saya's voice and the richness of her voicings, those chordal constructions which form the heart of her art and fabric of her designs.

Other than Wayne Shorter's Black Nile, handled with energized aplomb, and Over the Rainbow, a 3/4 romp with a taste of Monkish humor, the compositions are Saya's own. My bias is for the ballads, the elegant Prelude, the touching Words for Music Perhaps, the reflective If I Fell for You.

This is music of high aesthetic order; these are achingly gentle melodies, harmonies that haunt and linger. This is why jazz never ceases to amaze. And nourish. And seduce. For at its core, at the core of all enduring jazz, is romance-not trivial romance, but a romance that reveals the most profound of all human yearnings: the hunger for love.

It's not easy being sophisticated and simple at the same time. But Saya has managed it. After hearing Words for Music Perhaps, based on a group of poems from W.B. Yeats, I read the letters the Irish poet wrote while composing those verses. "They are," he explained, "all praise of joyous life." The same can be said of Saya Saito's remarkable Simple Poem.

--David Ritz (Biographer of Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, Smokey Robinson, Etta James and Aretha Franklin. David Ritz is currently collaborating with the Neville Brothers)

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