Akima, and other projects.
Akima … Free Spirit Music!
The search for the beauty and purity of a simple melodic line along with a lasting interest in ‘World’ music has led me on this journey of self exploration through the medium of sound.
The History of Akima Music :
When I first got serious about music as a teenager my main interests were the blues, jazz, rock and classical then I discovered music from Africa, India, Latin America, Spain, Japan, Middle East. Later my study and serious practice of the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) has opened up a deep understanding of possible sound textures and colours and the importance of silence in music known in Japanese culture as Ma. The shakuhachi is also important to me as a spiritual tool for meditation.
I had the desire early on to play music that had aspects of global folk music.The Universal language of music has always inspired me for no matter were a person is from around the world, immediate communication is possible. Listening to the iconic master jazz improvisers who all had a deep interest in music from other nations and cultures …John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Yusef Lateef, Charles Lloyd, Charlie Mariano, Gato Barbieri, Don Cherry, John Handy… these great musicians inspired my interest in this wonderfully diverse music.
I had formed a few bands in the past that only ‘dabbled’ in that direction notably Hoboko, Kasanga and Amigos who all played a sort of Afro/Latin style Jazz, but nothing near the music that I had in mind, so eventually I put AKIMA together. Incidentally the name AKIMA comes from a composition by the great Yusef Lateef and it roughly translates from the African Bantu language as ‘birth and the celebration of life’ which I think is most appropriate for AKIMA music. Over the years AKIMA featured many fine musicians from all over the world but a notable one from those early days had an ensemble of remarkable African Yoruba ‘bata’ drum masters who joined me for a very productive musical experience.This was a very special group and I learnt so much about African music and culture. Thank you Ade’and his brother the late TJ Sowanu who sadly passed away far too early with deadly malaria..RIP TJ. That experience was truly both musically and spiritually inspiring and has had a profound and lasting effect on me to this day, enriching me even more to play from the heart.
Trio Akima, was a natural progression of the larger Akima and was very much inspired by my love of ‘world’ folk music, it was condensed down to a duo or a trio which features myself – alto flute Native American flutes and saxophone, Hugh Bance – guitars and Joseph Philogene – African percussion and n’goni (hunters harp). My main inspirations for Trio Akima are Yusef Lateef, Don Cherry, Charles Lloyd, R Carlos Nakai and the great legendary Japanese Zen masters of the shakuhachi. My ‘vision’ is to play music that is essentially improvised, both melodic and rhythmic and is deeply rooted in the ancient musical and spiritual history of all humanity and to take the listeners into a place of peace.
Zaum….
(a brief history)
Back in 2002 I was delighted to be invited to join a new group of amazing improvising musicians formed by my long time close friend drummer Steve Harris with whom I had the pleasure of playing music together for many years in many different projects, this event turned out to the most important and creative time of our lives! We had one performance booked at the Study Gallery in Poole in Dorset UK and it was to be recorded with the original line up of myself tenor and soprano saxophone, Cathy Stevens electric viola, Udo Zierzanowski electric guitar, Karen Wimhurst clarinet and bass clarinet and of course Steve Harris on drums. The group was an outstanding success and received rapturous critical acclaim by the International music press. We recorded another four albums all of which received outstanding praise in particular the album ‘Above Our Heads The Sky Splits Open’ which was awarded a ‘lifetime coronet’ and four stars in The Penguin Guide To Jazz On CD by Brian Morton and the late Richard Cook (see all Zaum reviews on the Reviews page) The original line up developed and grew over the next few years and was to include Adrian Newton computer generated samples and ‘found sounds’ to great effect (Adrian also recorded nearly all Zaum performances) the amazingly creative guitarist Canadian Jim Black and young gifted guitarist Mathew Olzack. Sadly Steve was diagnosed with cancer just as Zaum was scheduled to tour Europe and were also invited to perform at John Zorn’s club in New York The Knitting Factory but he became too ill to fulfill these engagements and sadly passed in 2008. Zaum still remains for me the pinnacle of joining a group of creative minds who produced what many critics have called “The most important improvising group in the last decade”
Torque………
( Zaum splinter group!)
Torque was a fairly short lived trio with the amazing Canadian guitarist Jim (‘j’m) Black and the great Steve Harris on drums and percussion. Torque showed real promise and in it’s short time produced some very original music some of which has luckily been captured on a cd entitled ‘Lost And Found’ (Safe cd 012) this recording features most of two special live concerts from 2006 and 2007 and is now available from……….. www.bandcamp.com filed under Steve Harris Zaum. I see the pieces on this recording as ‘sonic abstract paintings’ where each musical colour, shape and texture is put onto an invisible canvas by three like minded musicians on a journey to create something unique. Torque came to an abrupt end with the sad death of Steve in 2008. Steve’s passing left a huge void in my life as it did with many others who knew him, not only was he a close friend for many years but also a huge musical inspiration and I feel blessed to have played so much wonderful music with him in many groups, which included Torque and of course his amazing ground breaking innovative group Zaum.
Hearn Brice Fell/Hearn and Fell
Hearn Brice Fell is a dynamic improvising trio with the mighty Olie Brice bassist supreme and the amazingly imaginative drumming of Milo Fell. This trio has been a real inspiration in creativity and it continues to evolve an grow. When Olie who is very much in demand internationally is not available for a trio performance Milo and myself operate as a duo which puts yet another slant on the already magical chemistry we have together!
Improvised Music…….
Let’s be clear I have never ever considered myself as a mainstream jazz musician but more a free improviser with strong influences from jazz and the blues. For a long time the central core of all my music has been improvised especially with Steve Harris’s ZAUM and TORQUE our trio together, Akima, working with drummer Ken Hyder and pianist Peter Urpeth on various projects and more recently an improvising trio with Olie Brice and Milo Fell (Hearn Brice Fell) plus a duo with Milo I feel this area of musical expression to be challenging, exciting, scary and profound, creating unique music where the shapes, textures and structures are determined by the musicians in the moment. Of course all music is improvised until it is written down or recorded it then becomes a ‘composition’ Spontaneous improvisation is probably the most natural thing we do, it’s how we have conversations together, imagine if it were planned, rehearsed and read from a script…it would not then be a conversation any more! This musical freedom comes at a price of course, one has to have total control and yet total abandonment….that’s the paradox! There must be no fear of failure to produce something of worth or fear of making ‘mistakes’ this will only impede any chance of creative success. My own approach is that of seeking a mental state of ‘No Mind’ were I am open to anything that happens in the moment, the wisdom of uncertainty! “Playing improvised music is like taking off in a frail craft on a sweet and savage sea…who knows what cross currents we will encounter, what strange and lovely fish will leap.”
“In the end, improvised music expresses what it means to be alive, to act on behalf of life. It struts and rails, sings, laughs, sobs and screams. It confronts fear and anger full on and transcends them through beauty, sound, love and honesty. It is certainly not about false comfort, it’s about truth—a knotty, complicated human thing that calls for a knotty, complicated, and sometimes comfortless art..”
(author unknown)
The Saxophone……
My first inclination to play the saxophone came when I was playing bass guitar in Liverpool ‘beat groups’ as a teenager in the late sixties, I bought a Dexter Gordon record and his sound got me right away and then I discovered Ben Webster and I immediately thought “That’s what I want to play” I sold my bass guitar and bought a tenor saxophone! The next major gigantic inspiration came when I first heard John Coltrane, in particular the track ‘Out Of This World’ from the Impulse album’Coltrane’ it really did take me out of this world and then the one record that really concreted my love of Coltrane’s music like many other musicians was of course A Love Supreme, his music has had a direct connection to my emotions ever since, that message is still with me. Other early inspirations include : Pharaoh Sanders, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Archie Shepp, Miles Davis, Charles Lloyd, Roland Kirk, Yusef Lateef, Gato Barbieri, Illinois Jacquet, Arnett Cobb, Thelonious Monk, Paul Motian, Bill Evans, Steve Lacy, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Charles Mingus, The Art Ensemble Of Chicago and Henry Threadgill’s trio Air to name but just a few! I find that lately I have been going back to listen more and more to the pre-bebop founding fathers of the tenor saxophone, players like Ben Webster, Don Byas, Coleman Hawkins, Gene Ammons, Illinois Jacquet, Arnett Cobb. To my ears those guys had a very personal story to tell and an instantly recognizable sound so often missing in today’s ‘music school (over educated) virtuosic’ players.
From the past to the present: I have always enjoyed listening to and learning from the great saxophone legends but have always been drawn toward the ‘free’ playing of Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Sam Rivers, Peter Brotzmann and Evan Parker along with the more contemporary players such as Ellery Eskelin, Ivo Perelman and Larry Ochs all these musicians have inspired me to continued my own journey into a freely improvised creative direction that I now pursue.
Drummers……
All my life I have seemed to gravitate toward drummers, I think it’s maybe because I wanted to be one when I was a youngster, in fact I guess drums were my first instrument as I was always being told to stop tapping my pens rhythmically on my school desk and my knife and fork on the dining table, at home I would set up some biscuit tins and a metal fire guard and play along to jazz records with my mothers large wooden knitting needles and often dreamed of owning a drum kit but later I noticed that transporting a drum kit to a gig was really hard work and far too much of a hassle so I chose to play the saxophone and flute instead! I have been very lucky to play with many amazing drummers over the years and was very fortunate to meet with and have a long musical and personal friendship with the late Steve Harris who very much had his own thing along with some characteristics of Paul Motian and Sonny Murray. African drums also feature heavily in my appreciation of drums and drummers, playing with a master Yoruba bata troupe for sometime and also my friend Joseph Philogene who plays frame drums, percussion and n’goni in my group Trio Akima. My trio and duo both with the incredibly inventive drummer Milo Fell who is an absolute joy to play music with.
*Shindo!
Shindo! is a trio project with my long time good friends percussionist and drummer Tony Shepherd who plays an array of beautiful gongs, singing bowls and various percussion and Hugh Bance who plays guitars and uses samples and myself playing shakuhachi. Together we explore spontaneous improvised sound colours, textures and shapes which we see as small sonic abstract paintings put onto an invisible canvas created in the moment now and never to be repeated, using our own life experiences as a resource to create a meditative ‘visual art’ rather than a musical genre, sounds that evoke the essence of nature with the wind in the trees, the flow of the rivers from small streams to the mighty oceans.
Shindo! is the Japanese word for vibration which of course is the vital energy force within all things in the Universe and beyond.
Natural healing music from the Zen Zone!
Shakuhachi…..Beyond Time and Space!
The shakuhachi….The sound of nature!
For many years I have been fascinated and enchanted by the shakuhachi, it’s beautiful haunting sound resonated deeply within me from the first time I heard it, so much so that I embarked on the bamboo journey to try and learn this notoriously difficult instrument. This bamboo flute has only 5 holes and has a very precisely angled blowing edge (utaguchi) it is a deceptively simple instrument (simple does not always mean easy!) for me it is the most expressive of all the flutes, it has an multitude of of sound colours and textures which are only achievable by using numerous extremely difficult techniques that take many years of disciplined practice to master. The practice of the shakuhachi as daily meditation is also very important to me along with an interest in Taoism, Zen ‘philosophy’ Japanese art and culture. The sound of the shakuhachi leads us back to a simple essence of being. It touches the soul, purifies the mind and opens the heart, taking us on a profound journey to the edge of silence and beyond. The practice of the shakuhachi is a lifetime journey that is equally frustrating and deeply fulfilling.When all the world seems to me to be going insane I play my shakuhachi and enter a sound sanctuary and all is well!
The practice of shakuhachi is sometimes called ‘Suizen’ or ‘Blowing Zen’ (blowing meditation) ……One Breath One Mind!
AKIMA: Free Spirit Music (a brief overview by Michael Tucker)
One of the things I’m most looking forward to – if and when the current Covid situation eases enough – is a gig by the Akima trio of Geoff Hearn (Native American flutes), Hugh Bance (guitars) and Joseph Philogene (percussion, voice).
Geoff has run Akima for many years. Quality musicians from the world over have appeared with him in a band renowned for its potent mix of joyous melody and stomping rhythm. One of the early, large-ensemble incarnations of AKIMA featured African Yoruba “bata” drum masters to great effect in a couple of Arts Council-sponsored British tours..
If today’s AKIMA is a more intimate affair – sometimes in duo, sometimes in trio format – the impact of its music has in no way diminished. On the contrary: the present Akima remains strong on rolling, irresistible rhythms and soulful, singing melodies. For example, the music that Geoff cut with Joe Philogene on the 2018 recording The Journey – for which the Afro-Caribbean percussionist created the striking cover art – is some of the most uplifting I’ve heard for many a moon.
Enjoy the quality of tone and diversity of both intonation and rhythmic impulse which Geoff brings to his potent flute playing on pieces such as Sunrise, Passion Sweet, Butterflies and Water, and Earth Beams. And relish the rich and mellow tenor sound and patient, deeply mature sense of time he exhibits on the ultra-soulful Desert Mist and Being Here. Throughout, Philogene offers entrancing rhythm and texture, playing at various moments the doussn ‘goni (or hunter’s harp), kalimba, frame drum, udu drum, shakers, singing bowl and bells, besides contributing occasional vocals.
Like Gusavo Ovalles, the contemporary percussionist with the Cuban keyboard genius Omar Sosa, or the the late Nana Vasconcelos of CODONA fame, Philogene knows the value of dynamics, of space and rhythmic relief. Never overdoing things, his captivating warmth of tone, texture and accent offers an ideal springboard for Geoff’s various ventures into realms both sensuous and spiritual. Hear especially the delicate joy of the sonic poetry Philogene brings to both Butterflies and Water and his solo feature, Blossom Tree.
There is a telling lyricism to The Journey which recalls the insight of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi that, in contrast to the merely simplistic, true or meaningful simplicity emerges organically as the fruit of a lifetime’s endeavour. Over the years, Geoff Hearn has played all kinds of music, from the blues through many variants of modern and contemporary jazz to the shape-shifting worlds of free improv – to which the late Steve Harris’s ZAUM, of which Geoff was a constant and essential member, contributed so much. Today, Geoff is operating at a further special level, playing with striking originality in the sort of zone one associates with elective affinities of his such as Yusef Lateef, Don Cherry, Charles Lloyd and R Carlos Nakai.
Is this latest AKIMA music jazz, or some sort of emergent Universal Folk Music? And, do such distinctions really matter? Like the surpassing, Zen-touched Deep Song album Geoff recorded recently with keyboardist Simon Robinson – which got a five star review from me in Jazz Journal – The Journey cuts through and beyond all such questions and categories to approach the irradiated heart of things.
For Geoff, music has never been an end in itself. Rather, it is has always been a – perhaps the – crucial element driving what continues to be a quest to sense and cherish what the Catalan painter and printmaker Antoni Tàpies called “the real reality” of our life here on earth. Such a reality lies far indeed from the reductive worlds of mass entertainment and political ideology. Small wonder, then, that Geoff calls what Akima plays today “Free Spirit Music”.
Michael Tucker (Jazz Journal)
Root Strata…….
Root Strata is a project with another good friend the very gifted keyboardist, composer and producer Simon Robinson. So far we have recorded three albums together ‘The Secret Of Root Strata’,’Deep Song’ and ‘Affinity Suite’. The Secret Of Root Strata is no longer available but can be heard via ‘Lemoncake Music’ and is re-titled ‘Mystical Journey’ (LCM 0171) those tracks are available to listen to or buy for film music,tv ads etc. However ‘Deep Song’ is now available from Bandcamp.com and is receiving five star reviews from the music press everywhere.
‘Deep Song’ takes our Root Strata project onto another level and is being called “A superb outstanding original masterpiece!” Michael Tucker of (www.jazzjournal.co.uk) gave it a five star review saying : “The best post CODONA music I’ve heard, this music merits the widest possible distribution. Don Cherry would have loved it” High praise indeed! (see below for review in Jazz Journal)
*We have just recently released our third album which is completely different from Deep Song and is titled Affinity Suite, it’s in four movements and features orchestral strings, choral passages, beautifully spacious piano with myself on tenor saxophone exclusively. We hope this one will appeal to a wide audience including fans of electronic sound design, serious modern classical music who are into into the likes of Arvo Part and also ‘spiritual’ jazz! It’s now available on www.Bandcamp.com
Root Strata – ‘Deep Song’ – Jazz Journal review 2020
In 1943 the Scottish painter and jazz musician Alan Davie (1920 – 2014) wrote in his note book that “The great works are made from life itself, stripped of superficiality and impurity; they are pure soul and joy, delicate like the delicateness of line across immense mountains” Decades on, here is one such work.
This is the suite of original pieces I highlighted in my Geoff Hearn: blues in space post of 19/10/2020, when I called it some of the best post-CODONA music I’d heard: for initial justification of such a characterisation, sample the poised yet flowing invocations that are Spirit Dance and The Storyteller. Deep Song is the second release from the Root Strata duo of Hearn and pianist and keyboardist Simon Robinson, following The Secret Of Root Strata of 2011.
Like that album, Deep Song – in equal measure reflective and penetrating, jazz-caressed and folk-limned – was produced by Robinson who has both a beautiful touch and an equisite, often entrancing sense of dynamincs, exploiting a telling range of software instrumental sounds (including kora, bass and percussion) in a rich yet astutely tempered blend of modally sprung, diversely energising rhythmic figures and atmospheric texture.
Hearn sets aside his potent tenor saxophone to feature concert C and alto flutes, shakuhachi and Native American flutes: all are played with a poetically compelling blend of pitch-bending economy and rhythmic subtlety. Soprano sax features on the spare and deeply “breathing” meditation that is the title track and the achingly tender Dream Weaver.
The last is a Hearn original, not the Charles Lloyd classic from the 1966 recording with Keith Jarrett, Cecil McBee and Jack DeJohnette. But Lloyd has long been one of Hearn’s chief elective affinities, together with Don Cherry and Yusef Lateef. If you’re familiar with the work of these indefatigable explorers of the human spirit, you’ll have some idea of what to expect from this music.
Don Cherry called the work of his latter years “primal music”. Think also here of the Native American flautist R Carlos Nakai or the Honkyoku shakuhachi of the travelling Zen masters of old (hear Empty Sky, which- together with the similarly rubato Winter Dream – is some of the most soul-piercing music I’ve heard) and you’ll come closer still to the transformative blend of unforced jazz literacy and world-embracing poetics which sparks the “pure soul and joy” that is Deep Song.
Michael Tucker Jazz Journal *****
The Blues……..
Back in the 60’s when I was around 17 years old I was very lucky to attend the ‘American Folk and Blues Festival which toured the UK from 1962 to 1968 and that changed my life! Those on the bill included Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker, T-bone Walker, Memphis Slim, Otis Rush, Jimmy Reed, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Big Mama Thornton, and a host of other great blues legends. An all day ticket cost just five ‘shillings’.(back in the 1960’s twenty ‘shillings’ was worth a £1.00!) I think the blues in all it’s forms is the basic fundamental expression of the human soul. This early inspiration led me to co-form the Blues Corporation with bassist Nigel Thomas and forty years later the band continues to delight large audiences, I recently left the band amicably to concentrate on my own musical directions, however I still retain the blues in my saxophone improvisations and my shakuhachi journey, I think all great music has elements of the blues!
May the positive spirit within us all overcome the difficulties in life with more love, understanding, compassion and peace.
Many Blessings to all!