Pianist’s ‘Light’ Creates Impressionistic Images

Keiko Matsui is a popular music anomaly. A classically trained pianist who is Japanese and female, she hardly fits the usual model for success in the contemporary jazz arena. Yet her six albums have sold more than half a million units, and she is the No. 3 best-selling contemporary jazz artist in America--surpassed only by Kenny G and Boney James.

Matsui is undoubtedly going to sell quite a few more albums after the airing of her atmospheric PBS special, “Keiko Matsui: Light Above the Trees.” As with John Tesh and Yanni before her, the high visibility of television will introduce her to an audience reaching well beyond the boundaries of contemporary jazz.

What that audience will see and hear in this colorful, concert-based program is a small, slender woman who plays her keyboards with unexpected vigor and force, performing music filled with accessible melodies, floating harmonies and catchy rhythms. Although it’s a bit of a stretch to define Matsui as a jazz improviser in the traditional sense, she nonetheless is an effective soloist, within her somewhat mechanical, scale-oriented style.

But “Light Above the Trees” seems less concerned with musical issues than with creating a series of impressionistic, music video-like images.

Matsui is seen performing at the Itsukushima Shrine in Japan, accompanied by Noh dancers and actors; she is seen on stage, surrounded by musicians, at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts. On some numbers she wears a long, elegant gown, on others she wears a micro miniskirt. She plays grand piano, electronic keyboards and--in a sequence with saxophonist Paul Taylor--an over-the-shoulder keyboard that allows her to rove the stage like a rock ‘n’ roll guitarist.

Her performance--like much contemporary jazz and, for that matter, like the work of Tesh and Yanni--holds few surprises. Carefully packaged and precisely articulated, it is a presentation that is easily experienced and easily forgotten, often drifting into video background music. One suspects, in fact, that the image of Matsui (who, despite her stylish attire, still maintains a demure, traditional manner) cranking out vigorous contemporary sounds will survive in memory well beyond any recollection of the actual music she is playing.

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* “Keiko Matsui: Light Above the Trees” airs at 9:30 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.