Like a white-water rafter going over the falls, Stomu Takeishi is at his best when jumping headlong into another daring improvisation—taking chances and breaking the rules. Since arriving in New York in 1986, Takeishi has been the choice bassist for numerous adventurous composer/improvisers on the city’s Downtown jazz scene. Whether he’s rumbling subliminally, offering melodic counterpoint, or spontaneously composing with real-time looping, Stomu emphasizes space rather than chops and hearing rather than riffing.
Prized for his combination of forceful execution, high sensitivity, and sense of daring, Stomu has been tapped by forward-thinking bandleaders such as saxophonist Henry Threadgill, conductor Butch Morris, drummer Paul Motian, slide guitarist David Tronzo, and trumpeter Cuong Vu. All have come to rely on him to deliver much more than just covering the root and walking on the low end. “I approach it as if I’m the one who composed the music,” says Takeishi. “I try to understand the compositions from the inside out, how they work, and what I can do with them. One thing I learned from Henry Threadgill was to come up with a game plan of how you’re going to deal with those harmonies and rhythms. But you also have to go by ear, so that whenever you hear something that intrigues you, even if it’s against your game plan, you go for it. Don’t trust your plan—trust what you hear in the moment.”
Equipped with remarkable facility on his fretless electric and acoustic Klein 5-strings, Takeishi follows the music’s flow and dynamics wherever they might lead and reacts accordingly. If the band builds to a shrieking crescendo, he may pound the strings with his fist. If he’s playing with instruments like harmonium and tablas, he might bring it down to a whisper and caress the strings, chording or gently palm-muting and thumb-plucking. In Cuong Vu’s trio, Stomu relies on the Boomerang phrase sampler to create spontaneous tones and textures, as on 2001’s Come Play With Me [Knitting Factory]. “I also use a Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler for looping, so actually I have two loops going on simultaneously. Sometimes I mix the two; sometimes I take one out. I’m thinking about getting a second Boomerang, because it’s so easy to use onstage. Sometimes those loops can be a complete surprise; they might come about by accident. But I like taking an accident to another place.”
With cellist Erik Friedlander’s group Topaz, Stomu offers guitar-like counterpoint on some of the more composed chamber-like pieces, but he’s often at his most creative in ambient settings where his volume swells and loops create dark tension—as on “Bedlam,” “Wire,” and “Glass Bell,” from the group’s third release, Quake [Crytogramophone]. And in Henry Threadgill’s Make A Move, a group he’s played with for five years, it often sounds as though Stomu is soloing through entire suites of music. “Henry doesn’t need the bass to play a traditional function. To him, bass is more like the other melody that goes under everybody else in the band. So naturally, I have a great time playing that role.”
Originally a koto player, in 1983 Takeishi left his small hometown of Mito, Japan, to study bass at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. After graduating in 1986 he came to New York to check out the scene, with plans to return to Japan after two years of absorbing as many influences as he could. Sixteen years later he’s still in the Big Apple. His credo? Deal with the moment and come up with something. He even invites mistakes as another opportunity at discovery. “Mistakes are good; you learn so much from them. Mistakes can really help you open your eyes about music.”
—Bill Milkowski