Japanese Jazz Pianist Senri Oe Releases New Trio Album “Class of ’88” | LISTEN!

Japanese Mega J-Pop Star Turned Jazz Pianist
Senri Oe Merges His Superstar Past with Jazz Pianist Present on New Trio Album, Class of ’88

Reimagined Hits from ‘80s and ‘90s Debut Alongside New Jazz Originals Performed with Bassist Matt Clohesy and Drummer Ross Pederson

Available Now via PND and Sony Music Masterworks

While his name may be unfamiliar to American audiences, it’s hard to overstate how famous Senri Oe became in his home country during the ‘80s and ‘90s. Picture a J-pop Justin Timberlake playing to stadiums and arenas that the Beatles once performed in. Then leaving it all all behind at age 47 and moving to NYC in 2008 to study jazz piano at the New School of Contemporary Music shedding in practice rooms alongside his 20 year-old classmates for days on end. He was anonymous and dedicated, heeding the call to reconnect with his teenage love of Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk.

With seven jazz albums to his name since his 2012 re-debut Boys Mature Slow, on his latest album, Class of ’88, Oe comes full circle with a piano trio album revisiting several of his classic pop hits, featuring bassist Matt Clohesy (Darcy James Argue, Seamus Blake) and drummer Ross Pederson (Manhattan Transfer, Grace Kelly). Available today via PND and Sony Music Masterworks, the album is at once a surprising look back and a brilliant look at how far the pop star-turned-piano virtuoso has come and opens the door for the millions of fans who adored him as a pop singer and songwriter to share his passion for jazz through these reimaginings and new compositions that, like his pop hits. have strong, memorable melodies.

Class of ’88 features three new tunes alongside Oe’s reimagined classics: the Monk-influenced ballad “Poetic Justice,” the alluring Brazilian fantasy “Lauro De Freitas,” and the wistful “Class Notes,” a beautiful solo piece that serves as the album’s nostalgic theme song. While Oe praises Monk as his favorite composer, the gorgeous lyricism in his playing reflects his supreme influence, Bill Evans. “That’s the most beautiful music in the world,” he says of the iconic pianist. “Tender, strong, powerful, kind and genuine. I was shocked when I was 15 and I heard Bill Evans for the first time.”

Class of ’88 opens with the title track from Oe’s 1990 album Apollo – an apt kick-off for the album as the original lyrics looked back over the decades from the ‘60s through the ‘90s while reflecting on the changes in society since the onset of the space program. “Bamboo Bamboo (Takebayashi wo Nukete)” comes from the same album, the original’s pulsing dance beat replaced by Pederson’s more complex rhythms.

“The challenge I kept in my mind when arranging these songs was not to change the original melody or chord progression,” Oe explains. “Japanese listeners will instantly recognize the original songs in my new jazz world. So the biggest changes I made were in the meters and polyphonic approach.”

“I Wanna Live With You (Kimi To Ikitai)” transforms the original ballad, from 1986’s Avec, into an uptempo Latin number. The title track from the same album closes the album, its original lyrics protesting war in Libya becoming a lament for the decades of conflict and bloodshed that have followed in the region and around the world. On an arrangement inspired in equal parts by George Duke and Hall & Oates, Oe cedes some of his original vocal melodies to Clohesy’s eloquent bass on “Cosmopolitan,” originally recorded for Chibusa (1985).

“My Glory Days (Glory Days)” is the thematically appropriate single from 1234, played as a straight melody by Oe alone at the piano. The humor in “Stella’s Cough,” from the 1987 album Olympic, comes through in the trio’s buoyant, joy-filled new version, while “Fish,” from 1988’s Red Monkey Yellow Fish, becomes a jaunty swinger as infectious as its ‘80s pop counterpart.

Though Senri Oe has left his pop past behind (“No more dancing!” he declares with a laugh), the 62-year-old pianist has never forsaken his songs from that era. With Class of ’88 he finds himself in the unique position of recontextualizing his own music as if they were jazz standards.

“My pop tunes and my jazz tunes were all written by Senri Oe,” he concludes. “I imagined myself throwing a ball over the net from the jazz side to the pop side. It was great to reopen my ‘80s treasure box.”

While 2023 marks the 40th anniversary of his J-Pop debut, Oe chose a different year to commemorate in the title of Class of ’88. That year saw the release of one of his most successful albums, 1234, which was awarded the Album of the Year prize at the third annual Gold Disc Award (Japan’s equivalent to the Grammys). Oe also saw parallels in the monumental social and political events occurring then and now.

Residing in Brooklyn with his beloved dachshund, Oe has come to love cooking (he sees it as an extension of his creativity). Creating mindful meals for one that fuse Japanese ingredients with popular Brooklyn fare and plating them artistically was so inspiring, he published a cookbook in Japan in 2022. The theme is “Solo Meals in Brooklyn” and features recipes like Fish Pizza. “This is my own history of meals,” he explains. “Because I am alone, living in Brooklyn. The cooking is for me by me.”

The Facts

Senri Oe debuted in 1983 as a singer-songwriter and released 45 singles and 18 albums by 2007, which is when he moved to NYC to study jazz.

Between 1985 and 1986 Senri had 11 best-selling albums ranking within the top slots on the Japanese Charts. He composed all the songs on these albums, as well as composed hit songs for other chart-topping Japanese artists. (Regarding chart ranking, Japan also has a Billboard, but ORICON (https://www.oricon.co.jp/rank/) is the oldest and most authoritative music chart in the Japanese music industry, and ORICON rankings are the most important especially for J-Pop.)

DL Media