AKIRA SAKATA & GIOVANNI DI DOMENICO

A duo released by Portuguese label Mbari back in 2013, which published their recorded debut ‘Iruman’, the pairing of Sakata and Domenico is a very curious encounter of generations and traditions. Sakata is a natural born pluralist on both saxophone and clarinet, having spent the last four decades working within free jazz, improvisation, and messing with the way these aesthetical and discursive domains can f*** with several different types of orchestration (pop, lounge, hotel lobby jazz), while also working for sure an eminently profound jazz dimension. It’s more within the later vein that he positions himself with Di Domenico, who is a clearly post-Cageian pianist, dealing with the good rules of chaos and randomness that cage developed (through infinite orders of the universe) with intuition and lucidity. In his playing you can hear traces of Charlves Ives and David Tudor, as well as the melodic and harmonic warmith of modernist chamber music collectives of the second half of the last century, such as the Penguin Café Orchestra or Benelux unit Aksak Maboul. In ‘Iruman’ the melodical sensibility and the elegance of Sakata’s phrasing flourish (one really understand why the visionary Jim O’Rourke holds him in such high regard), liberated and liberating Domenico’s tonal structures.