Aki Takase/Japanic - Thema Prima

The Guardian 100

(BMC)
Recorded in Budapest for her 70th birthday, Takase’s new album fields catchy hooks, improv, raw noise and cryptic vocals in her own indefatigable style

‘I want to show with this music that our time is not easy,” says the indomitably inventive 71-year-old pianist Aki Takase, “but that you can still play prolifically and happily.” The description perfectly fits the music on this vivaciously inviting album, and from much of her five-decade career, too. Pushing contemporary music’s envelopes while intriguing the uninitiated with tempting glimpses of the familiar has long been the Osaka-born improviser/composer’s personal kind of magic.