Track Listing

1. FRANCIS WHO? (9:00)
2. RICE CAKE (8:45)
3. WELCOME HOME (2:40)
4. BACK TO JAZZ (6:24)
5. BUTTERFLY SWING (3:49)
6. PARKING LOT (6:02)
7. COMFORTER (3:22)
8. WHEAT THIN (4:17)
9. URBAN RECEPTION (20:45)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #735432 in Music
• Released on: 1996-09-17
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Summer of '96 brings the release of "URBAN RECEPTION" featuring the powered improvisations of the AOKI/WONG/PAVKOVIC TRIO from SOUTHPORT RECORDS, Chicago. This direct to digital trio recording burns the landscape with vivid musical attacks blending bop, swing, modern, avant-garde, classical and Asian world forms. This is not music for the timid, but active passioned sound bytes.

Composer/bassist and SOUTHPORT producer Tatsu Aoki is the spiritual catalyst bringing noted tenor man Francis Wong (from San Francisco and ASIAN IMPROV RECORDS) into the SOUTHPORT camp with his Chicago label debut. Percussionist and drummer Dave Pavkovic weaves the rhythmic net that gives the ensemble its driving tempo. From Asia to Europe to The Americas there is a new audience of both young and old that hunger for a more dynamic form of jazz and new music that gives them more than the standard package.

NEIL TESSER - THE READER, PLAYBOY
"Aoki- the protean and prodigious bassist whose musical contacts have established a link between Chicago and the San Francisco area.... "Urban Reception" features free improvising and hard swing.."

Customer Reviews

Great Chicago Jazz
A broad use of silence and space characterizes this recording. Tatsu Aoki, a gifted and original bassist, has made numerous solo and experimental albums over the years. Here, along with multi-reedist Francis Wong and drummer Dave Pavkovic, he works in a more traditional jazz vein. However, this is traditional jazz of the mid-70s Chicago school, which means avant-garde but not necessarily free, with a reliance less on theme and melody than structure and spacing. Most performances are broken into multi-part movements, with the opening track, "Francis Who?", beginning amid stuttering free-form improv, gliding into a standard jazz swing, and ending in r&b honking mode, complete with 4/4 time. The second track, "Rice Cake," displays a similar design, concluding with a great funky acoustic bass line that sounds like an outtake from 1970-era Miles Davis. Other tracks feature string instruments and flutes from China, and are much quieter affairs. This is a solid release of unpredictable music from three talented experimentalists. Highly recommended.