For those still unaware, Takashi Matsunaga is a pianist, composer, educator, and music theorist whose work connects improvisation, harmonic inquiry, and an enduring engagement with jazz tradition. Across performance, composition, and teaching, he has pursued a musical language that balances direction with openness, allowing clear ideas to develop through interaction rather than remain fixed in advance.

Matsunaga’s identity as a pianist is indeed closely connected to his work as a composer and improviser. His leadership can begin with a motif, harmonic premise, or musical question that establishes direction while leaving room for other musicians to shape the result.

That approach provides the foundation for Ride Five, his piano-and-bass collaboration with Christian McBride. In this exposed duo setting, Matsunaga’s originating ideas become the starting point for performances formed through immediate listening and response.

On Ride Five, Takashi Matsunaga and Christian McBride create seven complete performances without relying on conventionally fixed compositions. Matsunaga introduces the motifs and musical premises that provide each track’s compositional direction, while McBride responds through rhythm, counterline, space, and harmonic movement.

The music is fully improvised, but it is neither leaderless nor without structure: each piece takes shape through decisions made in the moment.

1. Time in Motion
2. Pure
3. Air in Bloom
4. Unfolding Drops
5. Pure, Becoming
6. One, Becoming
7. Untamed Drift

With two of the world’s finest improvisers creating the feeling of form without depending on literal repetition, they open on their simply divine interplay within the engaging Time in Motion and the luxuriantly sculpted Pure and then we are brought forth the skittish, yet confidently nurtured Air in Bloom, the quietly embracing Unfolding Drops and the confidently stanced, rhythmically enthralling Pure, Becoming, the new set rounding out on the strident fare of the harmonically structured One, Becoming, closing on the spaciously satisfying Untamed Drift.

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www.takashimatsunaga.com