Now: Solo Live At The Howland

A solo recital is the ultimate test of a musician's resourcefulness, an existential leap onto a lonely stage with nowhere to hide. Sumi Tonooka's consistently enthralling new CD Now-Live at the Howland (ARC, April 17, 2012) demonstrates that the veteran pianist is more than ready for this scrutiny. Long recognized by her peers as a scintillating improviser, Tonooka offers an authoritative statement with her first solo session, confirming her status as a capaciously creative composer and a keyboard stylist of the highest order. Recorded at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY and funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign, the album showcases Tonooka as both interpreter and composer with two revealing sets. She devotes the first half of the program to standards and classic compositions by jazz masters who have shaped her musical concept. The second set connects the dots between her muses and her compositional imagination, focusing on her beautifully realized originals. An unusually vivid snapshot, the album captures the evening exactly as it unfolded, with no touchups, overdubs or sonic sweetening. The idea was to document the performance, sort of one evening in the life of an artist, Tonooka says. Playing solo piano is something I've done a lot of, as interior work, but not as performer. You feel like you're out there bare, with no clothes on. It's very intimate, really letting people into your world in a different way. I guess having lived this long I felt I could handle it. In interpreting standards, Tonooka possesses a clarity and probing intelligence that offers startling insights into familiar fare (I'll play a tune for years to try to find a personal way in, she says). Her hornlike approach to phrasing transforms I Hear a Rhapsody, a soaring standard introduced by Tommy Dorsey in 1941, distilling from the lush chords a lithe melody. In her hands, I'm Old Fashioned gets a jolt of energy, so a caressing ballad turns into a bebop workout that would do her Detroit heroes like Tommy Flanagan, Roland Hanna and Hank Jones proud. Unlike so many pianists who interpret Monk, Tonooka avoids mimicking his percussive approach while interpreting his classic piece Evidence. Though not given to bravura displays, she makes full use of the keyboard while brazenly tearing through Monk's harmonic steeplechase. Perhaps the most revealing piece in the first set is Tonooka's blues-steeped Mary Lou Williams medley, which opens with saxophonist John Stubblefield's Baby Man, a tough but tender tune that Williams often played. Tonooka seamlessly segues into Williams' seminal Waltz Boogie (the most significant jazz experiment in waltz time to follow in the footsteps of Fats Waller's Jitterbug Waltz) and concludes with Williams' deep azure Dirge Blues. Though seemingly disparate, the first set is an extended tribute to Tonooka's fabulously rich array of teachers and influences. My parents took me to see Monk at the Aqua Lounge when I was 13, says Tonooka, who was born and raised in Philadelphia. I was already a Monk fan. It was because of his music that I wanted to be a jazz musician. Mary Lou Williams was a teacher of mine, not for long, but at a pivotal time. I used to go see her play in Harlem when I was in college. Being around her person and music, the depth of her spirit, was very profound for me. Profound would be the best way to describe Tonooka's program of original compositions, if the word also conveyed her gift for infusing even the most intricate tunes with a sense of wondrous adventure. She opens the set with Phantom, Carousel, a title that effectively evokes the piece's haunting mood, an unsettling but inviting soundscape built upon a harmonic progression that feels simultaneously playful and mournful. It is one of those compositions that came at me whole, Tonooka says. I always notice that it has an impact on people when I perform it and I think it has to do with the notes in the piece. There is some heavy mysticism in these tones, very hypnotic. Sojourn 1/Uganda Blues is a medley of two pi