Er spielte einen Zyklus von neun nachdenklichen Improvisationen, in deren Mitte eine ergreifende Interpretation des Bossa-Nova-Klassikers ‚Black Orpheus‘ bzw. ‚Manhã de Carnaval‘ stand. Der Pianist vollzog eine von subtilen Andeutungen durchwirkte Meditation auf diese Melodie hin und alsbald wieder von ihr weg. Als Zugabe intonierte er das wunderbare, seiner Tochter gewidmete Stück ‚Little Abi‘. […] Dieses leise Album ist sein Verrmächtnis.
Manfred Papst, NZZ am Sonntag
‚Black Orpheus‘ präsentiert tatsächlich einen Pianisten, der völlig in sich ruht, der sich von allen Mustern und Klischees befreit hat, der den Piano-Inventionen eines György Kurtág näher ist als den Tasten-Girlanden der berühmten Jazzpianisten. Rund um den Bonfa/Maria-Filmklassiker ‚Orfeo Negro‘, den er quasi in Zeitlupe auf seine essenziellen Schwingungen reduziert, hat er zehn eigene Improvisationen gruppiert, die in ihrer anmutigen Schönheit eine enorme Suggestivkraft entwickeln.
Reiner H. Nitschke, Fono Forum
His playing grew more distilled as the years went by. All excesses were gradually pared away. In a short essay accompanying the new album, his fellow pianist Ethan Iverson recalls a note Kikuchi left for himself on a piano. ‘Play slower,’ it said. ‘I sound better when I play slower.’ You can hear the effect of that self-imposed ordinance throughout the new album, in the nine wholly improvised pieces and the original composition called ‘Little Abi, but most of all in the piece that gives the album its title. […]In almost any hands, the song conveys that special blend of sunny optimism and underlying melancholy that made the first wave of bossa nova songs so appealing. Kikuchi does something different with it. He slows it down to the pace of his thoughts, dismantles its components and slowly reassembles them in new shapes, testing their outline and weight by shifting the voicing of the underlying harmonies and adjusting the trajectory of the familiar melodic fragments. There are many pauses, in which the reverberations of the preceding notes are allowed to hang and decay in their own time. The result is an eight-minute piece of great poise, beauty and profundity.
Richard Williams, The Blue Moment
‘Black Orpheus’, the solo piano CD from Japanese-born pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, may be the starkest, loneliest music in the world. […] ‘Black Orpheus’ is the document of a 2012 solo piano concert in Tokyo's Bunka Kaikan Recital Hall, recorded three years after ‘Sunrise’. It would be hard to find a more personal, more ethereal or lovelier example of finely focused artistic self-expression. […] Music for solo piano is often described as ‘searching.’ This solo work—one of Kikuchi's last public performances—has the feeling of a search ended. He found what he was listening for. This translucent, beyond-category-and-time sound has an eternal feel. It is often solemn, occasionally slipping into jumbles of notes stumbling down the scale, before shifting back to a spacious placing of single notes, a single ringing chord. It sounds as if Kikuchi had tapped into immutable truths in a place of desolate solitude resulting in a serene loneliness and a peculiar personal enlightenment.
Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz
Hier demonstriert der sensible Pianist seine hohe Kunst der Reduktion und Zurücknahme. Keine Chance für auftrumpfende Noteninflation und geschäftiges Blendwerk. Dafür ist eine ruhig dahinfließende Musik der behutsam gesetzten Töne und Akkorde zu erleben […] Ein Genuss ist die nuancierte Anschlagskultur Masabumi Kikuchis […] Diese Musik scheint zu implodieren, wobei in den bedächtigen Bewegungen auch eine subtile Binnenspannung wirkt.
Udo Andris, Jazzpodium
Masabumi Kikuchi’s late solo-piano playing, all improvised, very little of it recorded, was a deep-blue nebula, formally abstract yet full of articulation and musical meaning, affecting on an almost primal level […] He played peacefully when moving through dissonance, and when he constructed a ballad phrase, his investment was lingering and extraordinary, as if the purpose were nothing less than to play the greatest ballad phrase ever.
Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
Of the albums pianist Masabumi Kikuchi released as a leader or participated in as a sideman, few, if any, are as personal and revelatory as ‘Black Orpheus’. Recorded solo at the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Recital Hall in 2012, it was his final such outing. In his liner notes, pianist Ethan Iverson -- who admits he was not initially convinced of Kikuchi's gifts -- states that, ‘The best of Masabumi has extraordinary vulnerability and corresponding extraordinary magic.’ Kikuchi was an outsider artist, determined to follow his own way no matter the cost. And he did. Black Orpheus reveals that Kikuchi's iconoclastic path may have been worth it. […] This album is not an epitaph for Kikuchi, but an entryway.
Thom Jurek, All Music
It is a fascinating example of his singular style, often dense and dark, but such pieces are often interspersed with sparse sections, and his touch is sometimes heart-breakingly delicate. What he does with Black Orpheus is a good way in to his own compositions.
Peter Bacon, The Jazz Breakfast
Wenn er spielte, schien die Zeit stehenzubleiben. Melodien in ganz zarter Erstarrung. Kein Einfrieren, sondern ein Innehalten in Schönheit. Der 2015 in New York verstorbene und aus Japan stammende Pianist Masabumi Kikuchi war ein auf besonders leise Art radikaler Musiker: ein Meister des Weglassens, der Luft um die Töne herum. Ein Evergreen wie der Bossa-Nova-Standard ‚Manha de Carnaval‘, Karnevalsmorgen, auch bekannt als ‚Black Orpheus‘, wurde bei ihm zu einer filigranen Klangskulptur, die ganz viel Raum um sich hatte – und auf völlig eigene Art leuchtete. In feinem Licht, bei besonderer Ruhe. […] Sein Solo-Konzert: magisch. Und selten hat ein Jazzmusiker ein anmutigeres Stück gespielt als Kikuchi in seiner Hommage an seine Tochter, der Zugabe aus einem bezwingenden Klavierabend voller leiser Unalltäglichkeit.
Roland Spiegel, BR Klassik
It is impossible to resist the temptation to view this album as a summing up, so skillful and poignant is each utterance, so finely balanced are the brushstrokes from which the music is crafted. Such transcendent pianism does not come along very often and while the music may not give up to its secrects easily, the effort will reward a hundred fold!
Marc Medwin, New York City Jazz Record
As is revealed throughout the album Kikuchi was a master of shapes and shading, letting earlier improvised ideas develop further, and always returning to a place of considered reflection. […] a posthumous release and one that is so wonderfully crafted. It captures an improviser and one of jazz’s most singular talents at his absolute peak, and further ECM releases drawn from his large recorded backlog will be most welcome.
CJ Shearn, Jazzviews
A recording of the final live solo performances of pianist-composer Masabumi Kikuchi (1939 – 2015) ‘Black Orpheus’ vividly illustrates just how broad ranging the idea of ‘jazz’ has become. This music was captured at Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan Recital Hall in 2012, and Kikuchi’s visceral playing and cerebral ideas conjure sounds just as much at home alongside Glenn Gould and Erik Satie as they are next to Bill Evans and Cecil Taylor. […] The album closes with ‘Little Abi’, a tender ballad written by Kikuchi in tribute to his daughter. There is no way to know if ‘Black Orpheus’ will be Kikuchi’s final posthumous release, but if it is, this track, with its plangent, unadorned warmth, would serve as a fitting coda to a remarkable career.
Matt R. Lohr, Jazz Times
