West Stockbridge — The West Stockbridge Historical Society has an impressive track record of presenting high-quality, small-venue jazz music performances in the Berkshires. Within the last year Armen Donelian, and Ned Rothenberg have made appearances in West Stockbridge under the Society’s sponsorship. The latest in their jazz series is the Yoko Miwa Trio, appearing at The Foundry on August 27 at 7 p.m.
Named a “Rising Star Pianist” in the 2022 DownBeat Critics Poll, Yoko Miwa has been an influential part of the Boston jazz scene since 1997, the year she arrived from her home town of Kobe, Japan to audition at the Berklee College of Music. She must have made a good impression, because now, a quarter century later, she is one of the school’s most popular professors of piano.
Critics noting Miwa’s mastery of both classical and jazz idioms have compared her to pianist and composer André Previn. Wilbert Sostre of the Jazz Times went even further, writing that she has “the enviable ability to play in any context with authenticity, clarity, and spontaneity.”
Sostre is absolutely correct. Indeed, Miwa’s own compositions find her ranging far and wide into styles like gospel and R&B. Even the hymnal and Led Zeppelin have a place in her musical universe.
Noted for its players’ seemingly telepathic powers of co-improvisation, the Yoko Miwa Trio has been playing together for a decade and a half. On drums is Scott Goulding, who teaches percussion at the Brookline Music School, and on bass is Will Slater an instructor at UMass Boston. Critics have pointed to the group’s “uncanny musical camaraderie.”
It’s a safe bet that the trio will play cuts from their 2021 release “Songs of Joy” (Ubuntu Music), created during the darkest days of the pandemic lockdown. The album, containing five new originals paired with songs by Billy Preston, Thelonious Monk, Richie Havens, and Duke Jordan, spent seven weeks in the Top 10 on Jazz Week’s charts and earned quite a lot of critical praise.
Downbeat Magazine’s Jon Garelick called it “remarkably upbeat and affirmative, living up to the album’s title.” CD Hotlist wrote, “This album is yet another triumph from one of America’s finest jazz pianists, composers, and bandleaders.” The album earned four stars from DownBeat, which also called the recording “a beautifully constructed album … The drive and lyricism of a pianist and composer at home in bebop, gospel, pop, and classical.”
In 2018, Miwa performed on the main stage at the Atlanta Jazz Festival and the Litchfield Jazz Festival. She was 2019 winner of the Boston Music Awards as “Jazz Artist of the Year” and the Boston Phoenix’s Best Music Poll. The Yoko Miwa Trio performs regularly at jazz clubs in its home city of Boston, at New York’s famed Blue Note Jazz Club, and at such venues as Birdland and Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Hear the Yoko Miwa Trio at The Foundry August 27 at 7 p.m. Admission is $35. Purchase tickets here.
