Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2010

Roy Ayers

“I met Roy Ayers when I was 17. He invited me to be his keyboardist and we made seven albums together from 1976 on,” said Tokyo-based American keyboardist Philip Woo in introducing the jazz-funk vibraphone innovator. “And tonight we’re going to bring you back—way back to the ’70s.”

Making good on his word, Woo and Ayers, who is in Japan with his rhythm section for a reunion tour with his old sparring partner, launched into a journey through the historic back catalog of the Roy Ayers Ubiquity band—one which includes certified standards like “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” and “Searchin’.”

Philip Woo

An interesting thing about Ayers’ music—at least in Japan anyway—is that it’s only grown in appeal. The smiling vibraphonist is treated like a conquering hero in regular visits to perform before audiences that range from the Blue Note’s posh clientele to the up-for-it clubbing crowd at Saturday’s Skinni Pants Indoors Festival.

The event was hosted by the eponymous Harajuku design-it-yourself boutique, and presented an only-in-Tokyo bill that paired Ayers with Japanese psychedelic jam band Dachambo, club jazz impresario and DJ Shuya Okino of Kyoto Jazz Massive, Berlin house and techno DJ Motor City Drum Ensemble, and a slew of DJs from the Wax Poetics Japan magazine stable.

While Woo promised a nostalgia tour, the music was anything but stale. He and Ayers have updated their sound, substituting the thin timbres of their ’70s recordings with the lush, wide-spectrum sonics of the latest music technologies. A wave of high-frequency distortion marred the first few moments of their set, but the Unit sound crew soon had the mix ironed out, achieving the right balance between the crackling funk of Ayers’ North American rhythm section and the melodic and harmonic accompaniment of Woo’s own Tokyo-based band.

Toku

A nod should be given in particular to trumpeter Toku, whose understated presence belies his supple, fluent soloing. Ayers, meanwhile, remains a peerless improviser and charismatic crowd-pleaser whose onstage antics come off not as a premeditated act, but as the natural expression of an effusive personality. His music—like that of Frank Zappa’s—exists in the popular domain, but is also characterized by wild flights of melodic fancy that in another context might present a challenge.

There were no worries of the several hundred revelers at Unit being put off by difficult music, though. From shaggy Japanese jazz heads to beautiful party people dressed to the nines, the reception afforded Ayers—who turns 70 this year and received his first pair of mallets from jazz legend Lionel Hampton—was unanimously rapturous.

Ayers and Woo continue their Reunion Tour 2010 this week with an appearance at Yokohama’s Motion Blue on March 21.