JAZZ REVIEW : Okoshi Has the Brilliance, Needs Swing

Listening to jazz at La Ve Lee in Studio City is a bit like sitting in a Parisian Left Bank cellar boite . On Saturday, Japanese trumpeter Tiger Okoshi played the pleasantly intimate, low-ceilinged room before an entranced audience placed at tables close enough to squeeze the edges of the stage.

Okoshi, an amiable 44-year-old performer making his first area appearance in a decade, seemed to enjoy the contact, joking with the crowd and leavening his tunes with personal asides such as, “For 22 years in Japan, I was Toru; then for next 22 years in the U.S., I am Tiger. I think I stay Tiger; then I’m only 22 years old.”

Although Okoshi has worked with everyone from Sonny Rollins and Tony Bennett to Michael Franks and Pat Metheny, his visibility was relatively low until the release last year of his recorded tribute to Louis Armstrong. Which is ironic, since Okoshi is a cutting-edge contemporary artist whose most obvious influence traces to the post-’60s work of Miles Davis.

Devoting a substantial part of his set to material from a current JVC album, “Two Sides to Every Story,” Okoshi played with free-flying abandon. Very much the master of his horn, he poured out brilliant flurries of notes, often building solos via abstract assemblages of bits and pieces of musical fragments.

Good as he was, however, and good as he may eventually be, Okoshi was in short supply on two important elements: a strong sense of swing and a clearly defined musical personality. A first-rate rhythm section--bassist Jimmy Earl, guitarist Jeff Richman and drummer Joel Taylor--provided sufficient momentum to equip Okoshi’s solos with the swing they sometimes lacked. But Okoshi needs to take his playing up another level by reaching down to open the inner gates of his own jazz voice.