Russel Baba by Idris Ackamoor, San Francisco Music Calendar

Russel Hisashi Baba is an artistic treasure who should be known by the entire jazz community.  Born and raised in San Francisco, Russel is a woodwind player/composer/lyricist of exceptional quality.  He has performed in a variety of settings from the adventurous sounds of Eddie Moore’s group, Space Shuttle Omnibus, to the ancient rhythms of San Francisco’s Taiko Dojo. 

Currently, it is performing with Space Shuttle Omnibus that is quickly making Mr. Baba an international jazz artist that San Francisco can be extremely proud of.  The crew of the Shuttle is composed of Eddie Moore on drums, Michael White on violin, Gary Fitzgerald on bass, and Russel Baba on reeds and percussions.  This group is definitely on the cutting edge of San Francisco jazz ensembles currently gaining national and international attention.  Within the last year the Omnibus has shuttled to over eight European countries during a six week tour (receiving great reviews and generating publicity for the San Francisco jazz scene).  During the tour they recorded several albums to be released in the near future.

Russel Baba is truly a living San Francisco resource.  His next public appearance will be at the Asian American Jazz Festival in October.

Asian American Jazz Festival by Charles J. Lenatti, San Francisco Phoenix 

In our search for exotic new music, we often fail to notice what is happening in our own backyard.

The multicultural Asian American Jazz Festival – a Kearny Street Workshop presentation at Fort Mason last weekend – gave a standing room only audience of about 400 an opportunity to survey some of the fertile musical territory being explored by Bay Area musicians.

The Russel Baba – Eddie Moore team-up was another story.  Baba – whose arsenal of instruments includes an almost endless array of horns, flutes, saxophones, duck calls, whistles and percussion instruments – and Moore, a strong, yet graceful drummer, formed the backbone of a group which also featured bassist Gary Fitzgerald and violinist Michael White.

Baba has the capacity to make whatever instrument he happens to be playing sound like the perfect one of the song.

Moore combined with Fitzgerald to form a thunderous backdrop against which the effervescent Baba and, occasionally, violinist White flashed sparks of musical insight. 

Baba’s playing was like an encyclopedia of musical influences, from Ornette Coleman – inspired saxophone solos and ensemble interaction, to hauntingly somber drones performed on antique horns reflecting a myriad Oriental and Middle Eastern influences.  His music jumped from the subways of New York to the streets of a Tibetan village and half a dozen places in a single song.

Chamber Music From The New World by Baldur Bochlin, Munich Review 

What a wonderful, unlimited and non-calculating spirit whines through their music!  Though many rules and regulations are set up, their music cannot be categorized.  There is the polyphone, rational world of contrapunct, the insistent consequence of the ostinato, the diatonic temper of the world of the micro tones.  All this is expressed in the music of Eddie Moore and his quartet which played in Munich’s (Germany) Domicile Jazz Club.

The drummer brought with him Michael White (violin), Russel Baba (reeds), and Gary Fitzgerald (bass).  These four musicians, without considering esthetic canons, moved in their own directions presenting a truly exciting chamber music from the New World.  They pay homage to early Stravinsky, they respected the power and fierceness of Bartok, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Ornette Coleman, but they didn’t fear to dig into the unknown either.

Some established things are not in their line like playing in straight metric.  They disregard the quint-quart balance of traditional harmonic, the tempered diatonic and stay away from usual melodic.  Thus their music conveys a somewhat archaic spirit which cannot be put in clichés.

CD Review - Earth Prayer, Russel Baba by Peter Monaghan, Earshot Jazz / International Examiner

Russel Baba finds in Andrew Hill, the great jazz-piano innovator of the 1960s, the perfect complement to his yearning, searching alto sound.  Together, they have produced a strong album that Hill – for several years a Portland, Ore. resident – can place beside his extraordinary work with Blue Note during his heyday.

Baba, a far less well-known figure, is nevertheless worthy of the partnership.  His distinctive alto sound is meditative, singing, hopeful yet tinged with melancholy.  These qualities, pioneered and so thoroughly explored by John Coltrane, are heard throughout the six pieces in “Earth Prayer.”

Baba’s urgency is reedier and higher-pitched on alto than Coltrane is on tenor.  His slow, soulful melodies are wide open, the perfect vehicles for alternating or interweaving alto and piano leads.  They present an idiosyncratic musical sense that perhaps stems from Baba’s teaching himself to play.  Among those who have asked him to lend his sound to performances and recordings are Seattle violinist and Coltrane-band alumnus Michael White, and the equally impressive late drummer Eddie Moore.

On this album, Baba has recorded with equally sympathetic Northwest sidemen Dan Schulte on bass and Akbar Depriest on drums.  They lend a compelling combination of steadfast, subtly exploratory and propulsive rhythm.  They clearly understand their role as companions, not followers, on Baba’s spiritual quest.  Particularly effective is DePriest’s taiko-like introduction to “VeiwPoints.”  The piece ends the album with plaintive determination and resignation that opens to joyful singing alto lines from Baba, into which Hill threads percussive, ecstatic piano.

Baba includes in his liner notes part of a poem titled “Russel Baba” by Lawson Fusao Inada.  Baba, he writes, “Is a name, is a melody / Of fields and mountains / Of villages and ancestry / Of the courageous journey / To mysterious shores.”

“Earth Prayer” is released on Baba’s own label, Ruba Music, in Mt. Shasta, CA, where Baba teaches taiko with his wife Jeanne, and leads Shsata Taiko, a performance group of youth and adult drummers.

CD Review – Hisashi, Russel Baba by Bob Rusch, Cadence Magazine 

Russel Hisahi Baba is both the name of a talented sax and fluteman and the name of a recording on Ruba Records label. 

Mr. Baba is a native San Franciscan, born there in 1948, whose playing on this record has a distinct “wildness” to it.  Mr. Baba’s Japanese bamboo flute bays wolflike on “Ancestral Space,” a piece of icy barren impressionism with Jeanne Aiko Mercer (Japanese drum) and Mark Izu (bass).

On “Country Square” Mr. Baba’s soprano sax, and Ray Cheng’s violin, are bird like in there interplay, an abstraction in the manner of the Grubbs Brother’s interplay.  Heshima Mark Williams, on bass, completes the trio for this cut.

The same trio sets out a most thrilling extended “free” improvisation on “Spirit Sphere” which features Mr. Baba’s richly toned lower register, alto sax work.  The saxist demonstrates agility and speed of both technique and imagination as he leaps and moves (occasionally reaching up into upper register squeaks) around, in contrast with, and in union with, Cheng’s violin; there is a closeness between these two artists that offers up the same kind of catalytic inspiration that happens between Wadud and Hemphill.  The two work a brilliant second nature game with harmonies, tones and inter-improvisation.  William’s role is effective in encouraging momentum and setting a rhythmic structure around the inflight extemporizing.

The final track is “Continuation,” a short moody passage, with Gordon Watanabe (guitar), which has a pantomiming effect; an effect that characterizes much of the music here.  This is an exceptionally well conceptualized date, even if it were not a debut release.

Russel Baba is a strong player with what appears to be an ample reservoir of ideas.  In addition it is good to hear Mr. Cheng who made impressive contributions on Lester Bowie’s “Rope-A-Dope” recording.  Recommended; very rewarding and demanding music.

CD Review – Hisashi, Russel Baba by Rafi Zabor, Musician Magazine

I’m quite taken with the eponymous debut album of Russel Hisashi Baba, a Japanese saxophonist from San Francisco who has chosen not to submerge his roots but explore them, not only in the gagaku flute work that makes “Ancestral Space” the most successful cut on the record, but in the precise sense of shading and detail that characterizes his work throughout.  He’s obviously heard Lake and Hemphill and his chops are up the influence, but he’s spurred on to his most imaginative work here by violinist Raymond Cheng, whose intonation is sometimes inexact but who may be the more daring musician.  This is a significant debut.

ShastaYama Taiko drums lifts spirits by Will Duggan, Mount Shasta Herald

Between the deep rooted traditional Japanese Taiko drumming that began Saturday night’s fourth annual ShastaYama Festival and the avant-garde world fusion mix that followed the intermission there was a spellbinding jazz improvisation number by Ted Tafero and Russel Baba that would have caused the legendary saxophonist Coltrane to want to join in.

“It was a great blend of musical and community energies,” said Ron Kapp, who was visiting from Ashland.  “Every year it’s the same but different as it lifts our spirits.  It’s as solemn as it is joyous.  Taiko drumming resonates throughout one’s being.  There’s nothing else like it.  If I had the time I would love to learn how to drum ‘Taiko.”

Approximately 1,000 people enjoyed the show at Mount Shasta’s Shastice Park, which lies at the base of the mountain.

Rebecca Duff, a four year member of Shasta Taiko, was still beaming the day after the Saturday night performance. 

“It’s a gift to be able to be part of this group in Mount Shasta.  The commitment and training required is worth it.” said Duff.

Duff played her flute and drummed during the first half of the show.  She was also one of the three dancers during the improvisational jazz composition by Russel Baba called “Distance Floating.”

“What Baba and Tafero did with their horns was beyond words.  And the dancers with their futuristic headdress and subtle movements was grounded but otherworldly as if some form of levitation had taken hold,” said Hank Longo of McCloud.  “The syncopation between the two saxophones and the drums was incredible.  The piece went on and on and on and still I wanted more.  The great spirit of John Coltrane seemed to be present while they played.”

The concert lasted well into the cool night and concluded with some edgy pieces that incorporated Taiko and a range of fusion elements by featured guest artists On Ensemble, which includes Masato Baba and Shoji Kameda, who both grew up in Mount Shasta as members of Shasta Taiko.

With a drumming finale that was truly grand the concert concluded as the guest artists of On Ensemble joined in with the Shasta Taiko drummers in a joyful piece called “Yorokobi,” once again raising the earthly beat of the heart drum within us all unto the mountain and the heavens beyond.