 
Posted
on Fri, Jul. 18, 2003
Beating the drum for percussion
SUMMIT TO EXPLORE RANGE OF GENRES
Akira Tana is one of jazz's most widely
respected drummers but he has never limited
himself
to any one style of music.
With a graduate degree in percussion from
the New England Conservatory of Music,
Tana has performed under the batons of
Leonard
Bernstein and Gunther Schuller in Tangelwood,
played in Broadway pit orchestras and
accompanied French chanson star Charles Aznavour.
He
credits veteran bassist Bob Cranshaw
for kindling his catholic musical mindset.
"Bob told me, `Your heart might be in
jazz, but if someone calls you to play
in a different
setting, you should be open to it.
Not only will it help you keep working, it
will broaden
your concept of playing,"' Tana says
during an interview over lunch at a
Berkeley
cafe.
"I never forgot that."
Variety of genres
It's not surprising then that Tana
is presenting the genre-crossing
Common Ground percussion
summit Saturday night at Dinkelspiel
Auditorium as part of the Stanford
Jazz
Festival.
The program brings together the Bay
Area's Afro-Caribbean
percussion great John Santos, Hawaii-based
taiko master Kenny Endo and L.A.
funk/fusion drum legend Ndugu Chancler
with Tana
and his jazz quintet, featuring saxophonist
and flutist Hafez Modirzadeh, trumpeter
Mike
Olmos, pianist Art Hirahara and bassist
Peter Barshay. The musicians will
also conduct
an open rehearsal at 3 p.m. Saturday
at
Dinkelspiel.
"I'm not thinking of it as a percussion
blowout," Tana says. "As a drummer
I like to go hear drums, but the
sound and
volume
can really be draining. Everyone
will get their own feature either
by themselves
or with the group, and there will
be different
configurations. I'll probably play
some of
my own compositions with the quintet
just to break it up.
"My goal is to present something
that people will be satisfied
by musically.
I don't consider
myself a fiery technician. I
like to play different kinds of music,
so hopefully
this will be an expansion of
my drum concept."
Santos is well known to Bay Area
audiences through his quarter-century
career
as a Latin jazz innovator,
particularly with
his band
Machete Ensemble. Chancler
is a longtime Stanford Jazz Workshop
instructor
who specializes in working
with young musicians.
He came
out of South L.A.'s Locke High
in the late 1960s, and while
still
a
teenager
was performing
with jazz giants such as Herbie
Hancock, Miles Davis, Joe Henderson
and Thelonious
Monk. He went on to become
an ace fusion drummer, recording
with
Weather Report,
Santana, Jean-Luc Ponty and
George Duke.
His trap
set work provided the taut
funk underpinnings of Michael Jackson's
"Thriller."
Of the three other drummers
featured in the percussion
summit, Tana
has the deepest
musical
relationship with Endo, a
sansei , or third-generation Japanese-American,
who
worked in the Bay
Area as a jazz drummer in
the
1970s while also studying
with San Francisco
Taiko
Dojo. Fascinated by the ancient
Japanese percussion
form, Endo spent a decade
in his ancestral
homeland studying with various
masters. He and Tana have
collaborated a number
of times
in New York and Japan playing
Endo's compositions for trap
set and taiko.
A number of musicians have
said that they hear a taiko
influence
in Tana's
trap work,
but "I've never consciously
pursued anything like that,"
Tana says.
Because of his
name, people often assume
he is a native of Japan,
but Tana is a nisei (second-generation
Japanese-American) who
was born in San Jose and raised
in Palo
Alto, where he graduated
from Gunn High School in
1970. He
played
in a rock band
as a teenager
and was exposed to jazz
mostly through his older brother.
His father led
various Buddhist
congregations around the
Bay Area, and his mother
played
koto and
piano. Tana
became
a devoted jazz convert
after acquiring a used copy of
Miles Davis' classic
1966 album
"Miles Smiles."
He majored in East Asian Studies at Harvard
University but he was still deeply involved
with music. Through his friendship with
budding jazz drum star Billy Hart, Tana had
a chance
to sit in with Hancock's Mwandishi band
in the early '70s and studied with Berklee
College
professor Alan Dawson, a highly musical
drummer whose past students included Tony
Williams
and Clifford Jarvis.
Full-time pursuit
After graduating from Harvard, Tana decided
to pursue music full time at the New England
Conservatory. He also studied privately
with Boston Symphony Orchestra timpanist
Vic Firth.
Although he feels that the opportunity
to play chamber music was invaluable,
Tana didn't
hesitate for long when Sonny Rollins offered
him a touring gig, though it meant flunking
an orchestra class.
Other extracurricular gigs with heavyweight
jazz artists such as Milt Jackson, Sonny
Stitt and Helen Humes during his eight
years in Boston helped pave the way for his
move
to New York in 1979. While Tana worked
widely as a freelance musician, touring and
recording
with many of the music's leading figures,
he is best known as the co-leader of TanaReid,
a band he founded with bassist Rufus Reid.
During the '90s the group toured internationally,
released six CDs and helped boost the careers
of brilliant young improvisers such as
pianist Rob Schneiderman and tenor saxophonists
Mark
Turner and Ralph Moore.
After two decades in Manhattan, Tana slipped
quietly back to the Bay Area about five
years ago, settling in Belmont. With two
adolescent
boys, he and his wife decided that the
region was an easier place to raise a family,
though
he won't deny he misses the Gotham jazz
scene.
"It's kind of hard to leave the creative
energy that's in New York," Tana says.
"Not to say that there isn't any here, but
it's
very different."
Though he takes occasional gigs on the
road, Tana works mostly in the Bay Area,
performing
a couple times a month at Bacar, a San
Francisco restaurant with a superb jazz bar.
He plays
at Yoshi's on July 28 with Hafez Modirzadeh,
celebrating the release of the saxophonist's
new album "Dandelion." Tana also teaches
at San Francisco State University and in
a variety of other settings, passing on
the open-minded philosophy that has served
him
so well.
"I try to convey to my students that if
someone calls you up and says, `I've got
this gig, can you play a little mallets?
Or play chimes?' that they should be able
to do that," Tana says. "Just be open
to different kinds of work and not have an
attitude
about it."
Akira Tana's Percussion Summit
Where: Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford
University
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Tickets: $20-$26; (650) 725-2787, www.stanfordjazz.org
By
Andrew Gilbert
Special to the Mercury News
July 18, 2003
© 2003
Mercury News
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