Haruka Kikuchi (trombone); Z2 (piano); Shouta (toys and things).
They were indoors this week, at home of course although, close your eyes, and this could have been an airshot from Preservation Hall. Open them and it was two Japanese expats and their son in the music room of their house in New Orleans. I don't know the address but if it had been Basin St., South Rampart St., Bourbon St. Perdido St.,Frenchman St. or any other of the streets that became synonymous with jazz in New Orleans I wouldn't have been overly surprised.
They kicked off with Avalon after first applying some hand-gel and then attending to some parental duties.
Haruka blew half a dozen warm-up notes, which is somewhat fewer than Rico did last night, before stomping off into Avalon.
The tunes may be hoary old standards but our dynamic duo breathe new life into them.
A couple of baby tunes - Baby Won't You Please Come Home? and Baby Face - were cue for the real live baby to come home which Shouta duly did causing general mayhem which didn't faze the loving parents.
Hello Dolly (for once played without the seemingly obligatory vocal) followed by one of my all-time favourite tunes from that era - Am I Blue? Ruby Braff did a great version on cornet and Haruka does the same on trombone.
Difficult to describe her sound except to say that she can growl like Vic Dickinson, put the boot in like Trummy Young or sound as sweet as Teagarden or Dorsey.
That's A Plenty and Honeysuckle Rose required plenty of agility whilst New Orleans brought out their melancholy side. A truly lovely tune.
The sound was great but the announcements, like so many livestreams were inversely proportionate to the music so thus, I missed the title of the final number. One of the comments referred to an Ellington/Bigard tune (which means it was written by Barney Bigard!) so maybe that was the one I missed.
My apologies to Z2 - his piano playing was equally as good - diplomacy here to avoid disrupting matrimonial harmony! But, joking apart, the pair work well together and it will be interesting to observe Shouta's development - at this early age he can certainly wail!
Lance
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