Review: Emi Makabe’s ‘Anniversary’

The title cut of Emi Makabe’s debut full-length release, Anniversary (Greenleaf Music, 2020), is a graceful, bittersweet waltz about the kind of partings and reunions that form the bar lines in the lives of touring musicians. It’s a spare duet for voice and bass made all the more poignant by the empathetic accompaniment of the song’s dedicatee, bassist Thomas Morgan.

The musical empathy between Makabe and Morgan is one of the throughlines of this quietly captivating 11-song, 49-minute program. Given that Makabe is a Japanese-born New Yorker who recently celebrated her 10th anniversary in the city, so is the interplay of East and West. Yet the more salient conversation here, and the most beguiling, is between the music of the Americas, North and South, specifically that of Brazil.

The influence is overt on “Rino,” a skipping, scatted melody that you’ll be humming all week, though you probably won’t get the demonically tricky rhythm exactly right. Elsewhere, Brazil is more felt than heard. The wordless vocal line of “Something Love” is as humid and mysterious as a Milton Nascimento rubato ballad and “Flash,” which has a prominent part for Makabe’s banjo-toned shamisen, evokes the dark flow of Nascimento’s “Lilia.”  Even the relatively straightforward jazz waltz “O Street” has a melodic contour that owes more to Rio than to the Washington DC address that inspired it.

Having Brazilian-born pianist Vitor Gonçalves on piano adds authenticity on these songs, and he’s a sensitive accompanist throughout. So is drummer Kenny Wollesen, who is as apposite lifting samba beats as he is doing the rustling, spooky Paul-Motian thing on ballads such as Makabe’s setting of William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper.”  Morgan takes an especially heartrending solo on that song; he and co-producer Makabe provide ample solo space  that Morgan fills with an eloquence and inwardness that brings to mind late-career Charlie Haden. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Makabe sings in English, Japanese, and on the soaring opener, “Treeing,” in a language of her own invention. Her voice is pure and deployed with admirable taste, and the sound, close-miked and cozy, suits both the material—all Makabe’s—and the conversational aesthetic of the music. It is as intimate as the performances on this understated and refined record, a very happy anniversary indeed. 

Anniversary is available now on CD, digital and on streaming services.

Tracklist: (1) Treeing; (2) Joy; (3) Chimney Sweeper; (4) Moon & I; (5) Something Love; (6) Flash; (7) I Saw The Light; (8) Mielcke; (9) O Street; (10) Rino; (11) Anniversary.  

Personnel: Emi Makabe (voice, shamisen), Vitor Gonçalves (piano, accordion), Thomas Morgan (double bass), Kenny Wollesen (drums, vibraphone).