Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band

Otomo Yoshihide is a musican with a direct approach. While his music has been truly wide-ranging ever since the early days of his career, there has been a common thread: he always approaches music in a straightforward way, based on a clear plan, without any ambiguity or concealment. I think it is because of this straightforwardness that one always feels a pop-like brightness in Otomo Yoshihide’s music, even when he produces explosive noise or plays quiet music comprised of an extremely small numbers of sounds.

Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band is a project that could well be called the culmination of Otomo’s work as of now. In the most direct sense, this group is actually renamed „Otomo Yoshihide and Amachan Special Big Band”, made up of the musicians who played the soundtrack of the NHK drama series Amachan, aired from April to September 2013.

In its jazzlike approach, it is also a successor to Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Quintet (ONJQ, 1999-2004) and its expanded version, Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Orchestra (ONJO, 2004-to the present). Otomo’s experience with the ensemble (formed in 2005) called „Oto Asobi no Kai (The Otoasobi Project),” whose members include people who are intellectually challenged, was surely an important influence as well. And in the Bon Odori Project - launched in 2013 as a part of Project FUKUSHIMA, which Otomo organized after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and held in various locations including Fukushima, Sapporo, Tokyo, Aichi and Gifu - the music is actually played by this big band.