Jazzing-Up That Cherry Blossom Look

Petite and lovely with skin like porcelain, a bright smile and flashing eyes, Keiko Matsui would seem perfectly at home in the studied formality of a tea ceremony or the stately movements of a classical Japanese dance.

But playing the blues? Or ripping off fusion jazz licks?

Excuse me, folks, but the loud sound you just heard was not the Big One, but the reverberating crash of culture shock. Because, although Keiko Matsui may look like a candidate for Queen of the Cherry Blossom Festival, her real identity is that of the most promising female jazz performer to emerge from Japan since the early years of Toshiko Akiyoshi. (She will perform at At My Place Friday and Saturday.)

“I have been interested in jazz since I was 12 years old,” the 25-year-old keyboardist/composer said recently. “I started to study classical piano when I was 5, but I began to prefer jazz improvisation, because it’s so free and filled with imagination. I soon knew that I wanted to become a jazz player.”

It was a remarkable decision for a woman to make in a society still bound by many spoken and unspoken conservative attitudes. But Matsui sees nothing especially unusual in her developing career.

Her marriage to Kazu Matsui, a performer (on the Japanese shakuhachi flute) in his own right, and the producer of her albums, seems to have all the traditional Japanese qualities, with a child expected next April, and Keiko usually deferring in soft-spoken fashion to her more voluble mate.

But on stage the roles are dramatically reversed. Kazu rarely does more than play an occasional flute melody, as Keiko slips out of her chrysalis and into the colorful rhythms of her performing persona.

Refusing to be locked behind the banks of keyboards that obscure most synthesizer players, she often steps out to center stage holding an over-the-shoulder keyboard, and plays hard rocking exchanges with the other musicians. The vision of this deceptively fragile-looking young woman roving from side to side, leaning into her phrases, banging out explosive riffs is one of the more fascinating images in contemporary music.

A concert at the Santa Monica club, At My Place, last August, for example, was highlighted by Keiko’s remarkable down-home blues soloing. Using a breath controller, which allowed her to articulate and bend the melody in blues harmonica fashion, she played several choruses of “Stormy Monday Blues” that would surely have brought a smile to the face of Sonny Terry.

“It’s very exciting for me to use the hand-held keyboard,” she said. “It brings me much closer to the audience, and when they begin to enjoy what I am doing, it makes me feel so good.”

Kazu Matsui is philosophic about his wife’s musical transformation. “I’m delighted for her to have the chance to make her music. Because the truth is, she’s a much better musician than I am. With me producing and her performing, we have the perfect partnership.”

Keiko Matsui’s first American album, “A Drop of Water” (Passport Records), the duo’s initial commercial collaboration, was released earlier this year, and has been showing up prominently on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz charts ever since.

“We produced that album ourselves, on a really low budget,” explained Kazu, “using our honeymoon money to pay for the recording costs.”

“Yes,” interjected Keiko with a smile, “and my father’s American Express card to pay for airplane tickets.”

A new album, currently in the works and scheduled for release in the spring (at about the same time that the Matsui baby is due), will require no contributions from the family nest egg. “I am very pleased with the pieces I have done for this recording,” said Keiko, “because they have been inspired by nature. It is very important for me to have a spiritual quality in my music, even when it’s very rhythmic.”

Keiko’s live performances will continue until the end of the year, when she takes a brief hiatus until the baby is born. But she fully intends to return to performing by next summer.

“Definitely,” she said. “I will begin to play concerts again as soon as possible. That is very important to me.”

And the baby? Kazu Matsui smiled wryly. “I suppose I will be carrying it around while she’s playing. But that’s all right. I feel more comfortable behind the stage than on it, anyhow.”

For Keiko Matsui, however, the concert stage is a home away from home. Her gentle, cameo-like image to the contrary, she is a performer pure and simple.

Asked about her emotions during those electric moments when she strides the platform carrying her instrument, she paused for a moment, struggling to find the right English words. “It’s a feeling I can’t describe, but I’m sure of one thing--it gives me very much happiness.”