jazz man thanks for finding the time first of all really appreciate it oh my pleasure yeah you know have you on so many records and I was like shit I’ll drop you a line let’s see what’s happening on your front because I wanted to start this talk with you as a band leader you know I have quite some records of you as a band leader and the last one I was a little bit behind but Aqua Puzzle kind of is like the last one I I know like what’s happening there i mean have you been preparing something new or Well yes I am um Aqua Puzzle I believe uh was released in 2019 or something like that that was my last one and uh after that of course COVID hit and then uh you know just trying to get life happening after that and whatnot but I hope to um I hope to release a new uh new album middle of next year and uh I have a a wonderful group in Tokyo that I’ve been working with now for several years so I’ll be recording a bunch of new material with that so it’s the same trio basically or No it’s a completely different group oh okay cool yeah yeah it’s a It’s a group I put together right before CO and then of course of of course we couldn’t really pursue it but uh um last two years I’ve really been concentrating working with that group so Oh beautiful have you written original music for that one i mean I really loveitions like Oh yes yes no I have enough original music for at least three albums now okay so yeah I’m constantly writing music so yeah what’s your process when writing i listened today to to the album with Jolola Barber and Darcas oh yes yes yes 25 years ago and there like cross links and uh Oh yeah yeah like what’s your process when writing i wanted to ask you that because like you know your tunes are sometimes to me like some some sort of soundtracks or something like that they’re really they’re driving i I don’t know it’s hard to describe but like what’s your process when when composing well I just don’t want Let me adjust my glasses um first of all if I could answer that question I think life would be a lot easier for me but um just in general and uh you know I’ve been writing music since I was my since I was a teenager um and I have close to a hundred works right now registered as published um so um first of all I I try to approach now the way I write music is first and foremost I approach it as a pianist there was a time I wrote music for quartets quintets larger ensembles and stuff like that but I’ve really been concentrating writing piano music for myself and uh first of all do I enjoy playing it you know I I I’m very selfish now with regard to this do I enjoy playing my own music and then um as a jazz musician because improvisation is the most important thing to what I do what kind of improvisation do I want to do how do I want to solo and a lot of times that’s where I start when I write a piece i say “What kind of solo do I want to play what kind of improvisation do I want to do?” And then I start thinking about the composition that would lead itself to that because um as a composer I don’t believe in just writing music and then say “Let’s improvise.” Yeah i need to know what the improvisation is about before I can do anything really good and so I try to integrate the composition with the improvisation and I uh I a lot of times work backwards from from the improvisation very that’s the first time I heard that actually i mean I’ve talked to so many guys and usually it’s like like you said you know we compose ahead and kind of have sections and then either we improvise on the sections or we go free impro like but it’s quite interesting your approach i I have to try it actually well um in some ways it’s a break with the jazz tradition because we’re so used to writing heads and then solo over the heads and then we take it out and uh that that’s a fine way to do it it’s a timehonored way to do it and of course I still write music like that but um because improvisation to me is a very personal thing and composition too is very very personal i want to make sure that when I’m improvising it sounds like I’m improvising on the piece that I wrote instead of just playing over the chord changes i I need more there to tell me to guide me otherwise I’m just going to end up playing something that sounds like it might work on some other tune you know so so that’s a realization I came to I would say oh maybe in the end of the 80s already mid80s yeah and uh the other thing of course was that uh you know uh because of the age I am we were heavily influenced by what came out of the free jazz movement in the 60s and 70s you see yeah um you know when I was a teenager people my generation we had to learn everything from learning how to play kind of blue to Charlie Parker to fusion to free jazz we had to cover all of it because they were all coming out they were all live at the same time you know so um I’ve played a lot of free improvisation in my life i didn’t know oh yes a lot um most of it is not documented i usually don’t play that in my own albums and stuff but if you look around you know um there I I’ve done a lot of free form improvisation um but one thing I learned from that is that in free form improvisation it’s even more important that you think like a composer oh yeah you see um and if you’re going to think like a composer then you also have to set parameters for yourself about what kind of improvisation you’re going to do otherwise it just becomes random you see yeah so I think that’s always been the problem for free form improvisation is how much discipline we’re going to bring into it and uh my choice and I’m not saying everybody has to do this but my choice has been to bring it in at the compositional level so that’s another thing that’s really you know changed my mind about how I want to be as a as a composer yeah oh it’s important yeah yeah yeah i mean I always you know even if we do free impro I usually have a head or a composition and you want to improvise in those that sets kind of the parameters sure sure sure yeah um sure and that that’s that’s really legitimate i I know a lot of really good free improvisers who do that um I don’t necessarily think in terms of heads all the time i actually think in terms of the building blocks for the improvisation like are there certain rhythmic kernels I want to use or certain um classes of you know certain groups of pitches I want to use or intervals or are there certain scales that I want to use i think that uh the process of playing free improvisation is a constant battle to limit yourself yeah how you can limit yourself without feeling hemmed in what kind of you know discipline self-discipline can you bring to that so that’s kind of like a a lesson that I learned you know 20 30 years ago and I’ve been trying to be get better at that but that’s really informed the way I I I write all my music now you know oh I would love to hear a more open album actually from you now since you I think many people would but yeah now you intrigued me i’m like man you should do that like Yeah interesting k I wanted to ask you like uh you mentioned late 60s and early ‘7s like uh what were the you were still in Japan back then right well actually um I grew up in Cleveland Ohio oh really i didn’t know that yes yes my father was there working on his PhD and he brought the whole family over from Japan okay so I was in Cleveland Ohio from 5 to 12 for 7 years and then I went back to Japan when I was 12 okay but the jazz when did you meet jazz for the first time as a teenager right i guess oh well um growing up in Cleveland Ohio there was always jazz around me you see jazz uh rhythm and blues um Mottown all that music was constantly around me because of where I was living in the city and uh so I just absorbed it naturally i think is just just part of what I think music ought to be and so um I went back to Japan and uh when I was 15 um I became very very interested in contemporary classical music and my heroes were you know people like Bar Talk so um of course you know um and one of my teachers said if you really want to appreciate contemporary music you have to understand jazz so and I’m perennially I’ve always been grateful for that word of advice so you know I went to a record store we had record stores back then right physical vitals oh man yeah oh yeah and I went to a local record store in a in a tiny city in Japan and went to the jazz bin and picked out a record and bought it and it was Bud Powell Piano Trail okay and that completely changed the way I thought about music because um first of all it sounded familiar i had grown up with that sound in Cleveland but then upon listening to I said “Oh my god this is so intricate and modern and it’s swinging so hard and how on earth can people do this?” music you know so from that point on I was mesmerized and I’ve remained that way now all these years it’s like a disease right oh yes absolutely once you get infected it’s like okay yes yes yes that’s it interesting but did you then go like you know checked out what were the other pianists that you checked like well um you know because I was living in a small town up in north of Japan very very few American jazz musicians came up to that area so it was all based on records um but from uh Budp Pow I quickly transitioned over to Bill Evans and then from there to McCoy Tiner and then from McCoy Tiner to uh both Chicka Paul Blé um Herby Hancock Keith Jarrett basically it was all the pianists who were still in their 20s and early 30s at the time um and were really trying starting to change the texture of what jazz piano was all about you see um and of course coming out of a completely different tradition you know or or revolution actually were uh you know people like Cecil Taylor yeah so so u you know all that became part of the the fabric that I was living in you know during that time then you returned to the states I wanted to ask Yeah i came to came back to the states in 1975 to go to grad school yeah uc Santa Barbara yeah yeah and you connected like I really want to ask you like your your kind of involvement in the scene i want to go later to I’m a guitarist so like Okay i think I have all of your records with Gambali and Okay connection with Alan but how did you connect with Flora and Ayto i mean that’s that’s quite an interesting Yeah h Yeah um well I was living up in Santa Barbara and uh Flora and Ayto were going out on the road with a band called Matrix 9 it was a it was a a a very good group of rhythm section plus some brass players and they were writing very very intricate music play and uh the bass player for that group um was a friend of mine and Floren Ayto they were looking for a keyboardist and so they recommended me and uh I immediately got called to do the gigs so that’s how it started and you stayed quite a long time with them right like I stayed with them for seven years that was my first my first steady gig yes oh amazing amazing and I watched today like just to get in the mood with you uh the Frankfurt concert which is the only kind of recorded want to know with Alan Holdsworth and Mhm uh how did you end up in that band i mean first of all you know I’m a huge fan and his compositions harmonically out of this world kind of two questions how did you end up with Allan how did you cope with his tunes like Steve Hunt told me like you know he was like writing down kind of you know the traditional jazz way of what those chords were that Allen was thinking yeah the story um well first of all I’m not sure how and why he contacted me i’m not sure where he heard about me okay um I do know just if I recall correctly um he had been working with the amazing pianist Billy Childs at that time really i didn’t know that yeah i think he did a recording billy was played on a Billy played on one cut from a Tavocron I believe oh and uh and Billy couldn’t go on the road with him and for some reason my name came up so I believe I think that’s what happened um and uh as far as Allen’s music I went to his house and he taught me literally taught me each tune and I wrote them down um I couldn’t use just ordinary jazz chords because his music really wasn’t based on that so I had to literally write down each voicing that he used on the guitar and then from that extract my own version of what the chord symbol might be but his music um you really have to play off of his guitar voicings more than anything else you can’t just say “Oh that’s an E minor 7.” and then play some E minor 7 licks that’s not the way his music works you know so um I really had to dig into his harmonic structures to begin to even understand you know how his music works and uh the Frankfurt concert was actually the first gig we played really oh man so I had only rehearsed with him maybe three or four times at that point yeah and so you know I was struggling just trying to make sense of everything oh it sounds amazing i mean espec you know Jimmy and Gary obviously helped they were monsters oh yes yes yes yes it’s beautiful to hear you play with him because it’s it’s just like you know the the lines he he played that that they were out of this world i mean oh yes even nowadays it’s like so modern and we’re talking Oh yes yes yes incredible yes um there were similarities okay I’m just going to say it that way similarities between some of the phrases he played and something that was coming out of the more modern uh phrasings especially from sax players uh at the time you know people like say Michael Breer um so the idea what we used to call polyonal construction um was very much embedded in the way Allan heard music from the get-go so that was a point of reference for me that I could find a way into his way of thinking yeah i must have been I mean I transcribed many solos by him and I’m like trying to figure out all the time like man what are you playing you know it’s just like But not just not just the notes he had a tremendous sense of structure you know each phrase almost like is a story it’s like a horn player yeah yeah exactly yeah so beautiful yeah and the legato technique you know like Oh yes yes amazing amazing musician yeah like what’s your story with guitar players i I I checked some of the records and like this period of you from 86 to let’s say 92 mhm mhm i think if one checks your calendar must have been like insane because you know there is Eldiola coming up then Frank and Bali this long association how did all these stories with all these guitarists happen and especially staying so long with Frank also um well I really don’t know how it happened you were there you were good yes first first of all I was in Los Angeles and that’s where a lot of the music originated but I would surmise that um at that time I was already heavily into multi keyboards and of course you know um Frank and uh Al and these people they they didn’t want just the traditional pianist so to speak so um I had enough gear so that I could fulfill the role of a multi- keyboard player which was very important at the time for every band uh but at the same time I had enough of a jazz background mhm so that you know from harmonic and solo creating uh aspects I could put together something that that uh um how would you say it that that allowed for a little bit more complexity and and uh perhaps sophistication in the way the tunes were built um so um maybe that’s one of the reasons why they they hired me um and why you know I did so many guitar gigs during this time yeah yeah that’s why I mean I mean you know I listen to all those Frank records that I have and it’s you know Frank Style is obviously really legato-ish and very good yeah very horn and then I listen to your solos and they’re also very hornlike i mean many times obviously you checked all the piano players but were horn players also important for you like Yes yes i would say more than pianists yeah right um the two the two single biggest influences for me as a jazz musician and of course everyone my generation is going to tell you this miles Davis and John Colry now for me so much of jazz history perhaps until the mid80s could be explained by which of these two you’re going to take as your main influence right so um when I started playing with you know Frank and um Alan Hollesworth and Aldiola my linear phrasing was coming a lot out of Cold Train because I was really really into the way Cold Train thought but at the same time because I grew up with Miles as well right it wasn’t just the cold train based pentatonic structure that everybody talks about it was it was a combination of using pentatonic circles if you will or elements but put together in a much more languid and chromatic kind of way that Miles Davis would use so if it were horn players right typical example of that would be like say Wayne Sharter when he was with Miles Davis um and certainly the sax player that I was with for a long time Joe Frell see I was Joe Frell’s musical director for several years as well i know that really yes how was that like I love Joe it was wonderful oh yeah it was wonderful it was a quartet that uh had Tom Brickline on drums and Tom and I Tom and I were in Ald’s band together and Tom and I go way way back he was on your first album actually right i think oh yes yes and uh that was because uh Tom at the time was when I first met Tom he was playing with Chick Korea’s band and uh essentially Chicka’s bass player at the time Bunny Brunell from Jer uh from France and Tom and the S uh trumpet player Alan Vizuti and myself the four of us had a group together we put a group together and that’s how our relationship started yeah so you know um but the Joel Ferrell group was Tom Brickline on drums and at first it was John Padatui um but then John got too busy and uh and we had another excellent bass player uh Bob Harrison came in and that was a that was a quartet we had for a while until Joe passed away wow so so that’s where I really really learned what the contemporary quote unquote New York style of playing um was was like you know so all that was there when I started playing with all these guitarists and I transferred a lot of that information on the synthesizer for example and uh you know not many people were doing that at the time no no absolutely yeah like interesting wow so that Yeah that’s makes sense why those guys are are on playroom i mean you kind of answered my question i mean Tom and But you mentioned Miles before and uh Sure you know you said Cold Train and Miles obviously are up there mhm how did you react when the Miles call happened or how did it happen i mean did the manager contact you and playing with Miles uh the uh yeah the road manager for Al Deiola was friends with the road manager for Miles Davis and Miles lost both of his keyboard players at once it was uh Adam Holtzman and Joey De Franchesco they both took leave so uh my name came up and um frankly when I got the call from the New York agency I didn’t jump on it right away oh and the reason for that at that time I had been on the road straight without a break for like three years and I had gotten to the point where I said you know I can’t keep this up i need time to spend develop my own music you see um but then I thought about it and I said no you know you really can’t say no to an opportunity to play with Miles Davis so so you know I sent in back then we had cassette tapes so I sent in a a demo tape of the kind of music I did and and two days later I got called back and said “Miles wants me in the group.” So that’s what happened how where was the first gig how was the first gig like Well we went out to New York and rehearsed there for a week okay i believe and then uh the first gig was in Portugal wow yeah lisbon I believe that’s how it started yeah how was that like for you being on the stage and I mean h how was the chemistry because you kind of caught the last vote of basically the last group almost right four less maybe yes um you know Miles Davis’s group um is to use a to use a metaphor that’s been overused it’s a village there’s something very very tribal about it and so newcomers are kept at an arms distance until the consensus evolves that interesting you know it’s okay for them to be in the group so you know um that was there for a little while you know but um eventually we all became very very good friends and and colleagues um especially the drummer Ricky Wellman and myself we were we were really tight we were really really tight yeah Ricky was my brother um you know we were really tight um so the band itself when I left you know we were we were tight um but being on stage you know there’s so many levels of of things that I can talk about but first of all it was the most nerve-wracking experience of my life you know those two two years um and the reason for that um is uh you know Miles can be a very temperamental person and he doesn’t mince words so he’ll tell you exactly what he thinks about you and what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong so you have to be prepared for that and he’s going to get right in your face and tell you but having said that um Samo I thought he was one of the kindest people I ever worked with really interesting yeah he was he was so nice to me he was so supportive and really complimentary you know um and he I remember just the little words little pearls of wisdom he would give me that still are with me today about Can you share a song please i always love them um well there’s there’s so many of them um one night this was in Paris I believe i was in my bed sleeping 4 in the morning and the phone rings and I pick it up and I’m going “Yes.” You know and without saying “Yo how are you doing?” or anything like that he goes “Listen when you come behind somebody don’t follow them cuz you’re going to destroy it bye.” Click wow oh man and I’m saying “Okay it’s 4 in the morning in Paris and Miles just told me what not to do.” Okay all right all right that’s fine that’s right and of course I couldn’t go back to sleep after that but Oh man yeah but you know little little things like that or um yeah uh an anecdote I like to use is uh on this one piece called Tutu you know which is one of the his big hits and I was taking a solo on it and I was playing a note that wasn’t really in the harmonic you know implication of the tune and I was doing it on purpose and next day Miles comes to me in the airport and he puts his face right in me and says “Why do you play a B on a G minor?” And I said “Chief I got that from you.” And he looked at me and said “Yeah I do that too.” And he walked away i love it he heard every note you played wow he really really knew he he heard every note you played he could make references between what you’re playing and everything else that had happened and all his bands in his ears right right like he he told me once you know you play like Chick you know cuz cuz he knew you know cuz cuz Chick was in his band and he knew the way Chick was thinking you know so um but it was those little little things he would say that made me realize that wow this is Miles Davis i mean he’s had Bill Evans and Herby Hancock and Chicken Keith and all these people in his band you know i mean he’s he’s he’s yelled at John Col Train you know so so I think it was just the awesomeness of those historical Yeah sometimes that just sometimes I would think about and say “Oh my god.” You know but I think for me one of the most heartwarming episodes and and and stop me if I’m if I’m talking Oh no please that’s why we’re here that’s why he called Miles called me up to his hotel room i think we were in Germany or something like that and I thought I was going to get yelled at but no he just wanted to hang around and talk and he picked up this horn and he played and he said “That’s a lick that Dizzy taught me when I was 19 see I can still play it you know.” Um and then a few weeks later we were playing an outdoor jazz jazz concert it was a festival and I looked around and there was Miles and Dizzy arm in arm walking slowly away talking and I said I wish I had a picture of that you know cuz miles to the very end Dizzy was his friend his his buddy his teacher you know and uh I could I could see that so so well in that one scene about you know Miles giving you know showing his love to the person that really formed him you know so that was one of the things that really stayed has stayed with me you know all these things that you mentioned yeah that’s like you know that’s like a university there or three for you yeah it’s true you know like just two years with miles it’s like finishing a PhD in I don’t know Well yeah yeah it was it was and I’m so fortunate i’m so grateful I had that opportunity you know amazing i wanted to ask you like musically you know you said he heard music that you played and because sometimes you you know you see videos and it’s like he walks away and it’s kind of But musically how much freedom did you guys have within those compositions and like what you could do or not i mean like how how much was it still led by Miles and I’ll put it like that that’s a really really good question um in terms of our individual creativity what we did on solos and stuff like that he left us alone now if he didn’t like what we were playing then of course he’d tell us um but overall how we thought about it how we structured things what references we were drawing on he left us alone okay but when it came to the actual tunes the playing of the tunes the heads the melodies the rhythms and stuff like that um he really wanted I think the stuff to not sound like traditional jazz i think that was the most important thing for the time uh at that when I was in his band his you know one of the one of the people he really liked was the artist formerly known as Prince so Prince’s way of putting music together especially his his rhythmic concepts right um and at that time for example a lot of that stuff uh was coming out of Minneapolis and uh you know uh we used to call it the Minneapolis sound um I think it was Minneapolis but anyway that’s where for uh Jam and Lewis were the two producers that for example were working with Janet Jackson and stuff like that Rhythm Nation that kind of sound um Miles was heavily influenced by that so um I think he wanted the group to always look more towards that kind of really really tight contemporary urban sound okay so in terms of ensemble work we were very very tight yeah yeah you know getting the hits together me getting all my patches together my sounds together and all that yeah we were very very tight um and of course um Ricky Wellman the drummer you know he invented the go- go beat with Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers out in DC so that was also a very very central part of the sound yeah yeah yeah you he achieved that yeah absolutely yeah yeah yeah interesting so it was a it was a combination of utter freedom and utter discipline you know which is good i mean that that’s Yes it is it kept us on our toes yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely interesting yeah it’s must be amazing i always when I talk to people who played with you know when you get to play with your heroes that’s like Yeah it’s first it’s like this fear you know I got to play with some people I really admire like Paul Mandalas from Oregon and all these guys sure sure sure and I remember the first gig I was like shit man you know what am I doing on stage with these guys and and then you relax you’re like okay okay cool yourself and it’s going to be okay it’s Yeah you you you reach that point where all of a sudden you realize oh my god we’re just a bunch of musicians exactly yeah playing music that’s it you know all the other stuff is away from stage away from music but once the first tune starts we’re in this together you know yeah yeah how did how did uh Playroom then happen you know we mentioned uh Tom and John and uh Bob which kind of makes sense now since you played with Joe together but where did the main impetus come for you for to become a band leader did you lead bands already before oh yes i was I’ve been leading bands since I was uh in my early 20s oh already wow you see um but uh there was a sax player I worked with person named Eddie Harris really yeah i was I play I worked with Eddie for a long time really and when I was still in my mid20s you know I told Eddie you know I’m thinking of maybe doing my first recording and you know getting out there and he said don’t do it because if you start becoming a leader now you’re going to miss out on all the opportunities to learn as a sideman people aren’t going to call you anymore and you’re not going to be able to move ahead head and I thought about it and I said you know what Eddie’s right cuz I had already seen a lot of people you know talented people become leaders too early and because of that they just didn’t go through the process of training with other people to learn some very very basic things you know um so that’s the reason why I said you know what Akagi don’t become a leader Now so even though I led all my bands I was playing live you know a lot of bands uh in terms of releasing my own work I waited I specifically waited until I was 40 wow and that’s when Playroom happened interesting yeah so Playroom was kind of like a snapshot of the various things I was pulling together at the time which was um a kind of acoustic fusion if you will um and also the straight ahead tradition i was trying to bring those two together you know in my own awkward way but that’s what flavoring was yeah i wanted to ask you you know most people I guess know you from fusion type of playing i’ll put it like that but then you you know you’ve played how did all those straight head gigs happen for you you know because I saw you played with Freddy Hubbert and Mhm art Pepper and Charlie Hayden and just the list goes on i think you played with all the greats basically like how did that straight hat um well when I was in my 20s and 30s there wasn’t this big distinction between fusion and straight ahead people who played really good straight ahead also played fusion and the really good fusion players the quote unquote we didn’t even have a word fusion back then yeah I hate that but the really good fusion players you know we’re talking you know chick Korea Herby Hancock Joe Zavo all these people they were monster straight ahead players first and foremost so um fusion for me and I think for a lot of my generation were natural several extensions of straight ahead playing it was straight ahead playing but with new influences like coming out of rock funk electric music all that that was starting to come together you know I really really doubt that even Miles Davis when he was doing Bitches Brew or In a Silent Way he was thinking I’m going to do something new that’s not jazz i don’t think he was thinking that at all he was thinking okay I’m tired of doing the traditional stuff what can I do that leads naturally to it because you know when Miles makes conceptual jumps it’s never um disjointed it’s never unconnected it’s always continuous yes the continuity is always there you know within within Miles i think that’s what a lot of people don’t don’t understand about him you know they think that someone who played Stella by Starlight can’t possibly do bits as Brew yeah but you see the quintet how how the last exactly you look opening up you look at the historical development of the way he did that music said of course that’s where he’s going to end up yeah so I think that’s the way we thought about fusion you know in the 80s and so a lot of the people um around me you know were using people from both camps because there was there wasn’t that kind of division you know interesting yeah like you know not not many people but yeah actually now I think about it yeah your your generation all of you guys did it actually yeah yeah it was after us when fusion became established as a as a genre that started getting a little different yeah exactly when did you I saw you played with Charlie Hayden when did that happen like what was your opinion uh I I had the opportunity of playing with Charlie only a couple times actually um I mean I knew him but um once was a piano trio concert that I did in Santa Barbara with with Charlie Hayden and Ayto Morera oh really it was an amazing experience oh that should have been recorded oh yeah um and uh because Ayerto Moro this is what people don’t really he is an incredible free form improviser sure right and he developed that in say in Brazil with her matoto peskal so he was completely used to that language and of course Charlie’s coming out of playing with ornate Coleman and Keith Jarrett so we were playing some standards and some of my stuff and it just came together like this and all of a sudden I found myself playing wait a minute I don’t sound like me i sound like Keith Jared or Paul Bla or one of those people you know that because that’s the influence that’s how much power Charlie Hayden has he forces you gently very very gently to play in a completely different way mhm because his baselines are so different from anything that you would have experienced you know mh um and he was a super super wonderful guy and a wonderful teacher and a and a really really warm and empathetic person so you know um and another time I played with him somewhere else i forget where it was but uh but yeah that’s I I I I bring up Charlie because I think that was one of the most incredible experiences I ever had to play with him i can imagine i mean just Yeah yeah just just his use of space you know oh yes even if it’s free and swinging it’s just like always and just that that presence he has he can play one note and you say “Ah Jerie,” you know exactly yeah and with Billy Higgins like I just love the connection oh yes yes yes yes yes yes what What about Freddy Hubbert like what was I only played with Freddy I think a couple of times once was a recording and another was I think it was Dizzy Gillespy’s 70th birthday or something like that yeah yeah um our paths crossed you know several times but I think those were the two times I remember playing with him it’s incredible monster oh man sure yeah yeah yeah totally yeah depends which stage of his life someone caught him I guess like what exactly yeah yeah towards the end it was a little difficult but he still had the chops when he wanted oh yes yes yes mhm amazing uh K like u what’s happening for you like are you still going on the road or playing gigs like any plans of coming to Europe actually still one day or that’s I would love to i would love to i just haven’t had the opportunity yeah um as you know for 27 years I was a professor of music at the University of California Irvine and I retired from that two years ago so during that time you know I didn’t really you know have the wherewithal to put together a constant performance career although what I did was um every opportunity I could I was always going back to Tokyo and playing gigs there and uh you know um uh getting uh bands together with much younger musicians you know um so that’s what I continued to do um I would say you know oh you know right now I’m down I’m I’m playing maybe like 35 40 concerts a year or something like that and that’s that’s a good pace for me at my age um and I’m always writing music and you know I just played a gig in LA a couple nights ago so um I have a great trio in LA that I’ve had for 30ome years the bass player uh Derek Ols or Darius Oleske yeah yeah sure yeah and uh the drummer Jason Harnell and we’ve been together now for like 35 40 years something like that beautiful huh yeah i know DK i mean obviously he’s played with Peter Erskin oh yes yes yes such a monster player monster monster beautiful man yeah i hope you you you would make it one day to Europe to I hope so i hope so too it’s been a long time since I’ve been to Europe so like what 2000s or ’ 90s or Well I haven’t been to Europe to perform but I believe in 200 was it 2010 or nine i uh I taught in Montro Switzerland for okay for a month to some to a whole bunch of University of California students and we took trips down to the jazz festival and stuff like that so I did that for a few years okay beautiful yeah yeah it’s getting harder now in Europe also after co just like Oh yes yes yes insane it’s changed so much man beautiful um you know I hope to to see the new album coming out soon and uh sometime next year as soon as it comes out I’ll send you a link send me a link please I’ll let you know when this is out and everything and uh Okay all right all right i’ll leave you a nice What what is that there you have an afternoon now or something like that all right well thank you very much Sam thank you too and really nice talking to you and stay okay nice talking to you you too bye bye bye yeah ciao dr jazzer Jazz