Japanese saxophonist Akira Sakata returns to OTO after an essential residency here with Chris Corsano and Darin Gray back in 2011. A powerfully lyrical improvisor, Sakata has been active on the free jazz scene for more than forty years, with only limited international exposure. Tonight he performs in a duo with Italian pianist Giovanni di Domenico, whose myriad influences have formed into a compellingly original style that has seen him play with the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Nate Wooley, Arve Henriksen and Toshimaru Nakeamura. Sakata and Di Domenico will then be joined by Steve Noble on drums and John Edwards on bass for a quartet set - the first time the four have played together.



AKIRA SAKATA

Akira Sakata was born in Kure-city, Hiroshima in 1945. Studied marine biology at Hiroshima university. Formed a group Saibo-bunretsu (Cell fission) in Tokyo in 1969, and was also performing with various free-jazz musicians during this time. Since the late 1960s, Sakata has been a constant figure in jazz and creative music scenes as an ever evolving and adventurous, multi-instrumentalist, and member of classic groups such as Yamashita Yosuke Trio, from 1972 till 1979, and Wha-ha-ha plus many of his own, like the Sakata Akira mii. He has recorded with Chris Cosey, Peter Brotzmann in Last Exit, DJ Krush, Yoshimio, and others.

In 2005 he began peforming with guitarist Jim O'Rourke, drummer Chris Corsano and acoustic bassist Darin Gray. They've since released three albums together. Friendly Pants is the first American release by Sakata in more than 20 years. It pairs the 65-year-old traveler alongside bombast Chikamorachi (Corsano/Gray) and O'Rourke as the producer.



GIOVANNI DI DOMENICO

Giovanni Di Domenico, pianist, was born in Rome on the 20th July 1977. Majoring in ‘jazz piano’ at music school - he further built on an encyclopaedic technique; rhythm, harmony and tone are informed by non-western traditions yet equally sensitive to Debussy’s “Préludes”, Luciano Berio’s “Sequenzas”, to the ‘ambi-ideation’ heard in Borah Bergman’s Soul Note recordings, Cecil Taylor’s polissemic density, Paul Bley’s bruised transparency and of course, the most radical manifestations stemming from the underworld of pop music, invariably tied together by his own original praxis. A distinction – one would call it generational – he shares with many of the musicians he has crossed paths with recently, of which we could enumerate Nate Wooley, Chris Corsano, Arve Henriksen, Jim O’Rourke, Alexandra Grimal, Tetuzi Akiyama, João Lobo or Toshimaru Nakamura. Di Domenico has founded his own label, Silent Water, home of an eclectic and occasionally unclassifiable production. He lives in Brussels.

"Di Domenico brings a total concept, with ambition and the result is excellent. Influences can be easily found in jazz as in African or Middle-Eastern music as in classical music, often combined, yet all very subtle and very much in its own stylistic universe of intimacy and closeness." - The Free Jazz Collective

giovannididomenico.com/

JOHN EDWARDS

John Edwards' staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others. Equally at home with fragile acoustic improvisation or driving free jazz, Edwards is quite deservedly one of the most in demand players of today, and has propelled encounters with Evan Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Matthew Shipp, Wadada Leo Smith and many more.

"There are those round these parts who posit that free improvisation is a cerebral, sexless art, arguments that are annihilated by the rough structural and timbral shag of this music." - Philip Clark, The Wire

STEVE NOBLE

Steve Noble is London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Peter Brötzmann, Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many, many more.

In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey's excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book ‘Improvisation; its nature and practise’. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins).

"Unrepeatable moments of collective inspiration and sudden sunlit shafts of modal near melody punctuate the continuing energy blur." Stewart Lee, The Sunday Times