Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Quintet

Over the past three decades, he has composed music for numerous Japanese films and television programmes, whilst also producing albums characterised by electrifying noise and wild improvisations. At the start of his career, he studied under Masayuki Takayanagi, one of the most radical and uncompromising guitarists in jazz history. Yet, throughout his career, he has never confined himself to a single niche.

In 2024, Otomo brought his idiosyncratic Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band to the Jazzfest Berlin and delivered unforgettable performances – as entertaining as they were sophisticated – both on the Main Stage of the Festspielhaus and in the Moabit district as part of the Jazzfest Community Lab Moabit.

Now he returns with the New Jazz Quintet, which he has led for many years. The project reflects his enduring love of 1960s free jazz, particularly the music of Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy. However, the band’s approach is neither nostalgic nor predictable. The New Jazz Quintet works with a limited repertoire that blends classics with original compositions, not to mention Jim O’Rourke’s modern masterpiece *Eureka*. The familiarity with these pieces enables the ensemble to make the material their own in a profound way and to create a study in contrasts. They lend the forms and arrangements a breathtaking elasticity, constantly revealing new perspectives and untapped possibilities within their source material, and allowing crashing sounds to collide with grandiose brass interludes and lively rhythms.

Line-up

• Otomo Yoshihide – guitar
• Shinpei Ruike – trumpet
• Osamu Imagome – trombone
• Hiroaki Mizutani – double bass
• Yasuhiro Yoshigaki – drums

This event forms part of the ‘Focus Japan’ programme at the Berliner Festspiele.