Motoko Honda's Simple Excesses Quartet
Motoko Honda-piano/composition
Cory Wright-woodwinds
Matt Small-bass
Jordan Glenn-drums
Featuring the Northern California's most versatile and innovative players, Simple Excesses Quartet's exciting repertoires are sets of compositions which unifies the classical chamber music, jazz, free jazz and experimental music.
Intricate and dynamic and often surprising, quartet brings the music which are like a flight in the clouds for both performers and audiences.
Concert Reviews
"The music of pianist and composer Motoko Honda is to mainstream jazz what Brahm's music was to the neatly packaged forms of the Classical period.
..Honda's ability to blur the boundary between composer and musician is an element of jazz that has been with the music since its inception. What is strikingly uncommon is the complexity of the roadmap that unfolds when the players engage with her music.
Honda's process has a transformative effect on listeners privy to a complex system of inter-communication and cooperative building strategies. "
-Live at California Jazz Conservatory, Review by Phillip Greenlief, Art Forum
"Why wait? Reincarnate now. Motoko Honda again exercised that artistic option with her Simple Excesses quartet, returning from her now established Oakland home base to remind us that this is one pianist-composer who never stands still.
.....Honda didn't completely submerge her aggressive attack and sophisticated harmonic aesthetic; she just sublimated them into cleaner essences and subtle suggestions of dissonance, making her music sound less like a statement and more like an invitation. She brought us visions of youthful optimism, playful quirkiness and a quiet walk in the snowy mountains, and the longer "Umba" told a dramatic story that masterfully united several contrasts of mood, mode and tempo.
.....The audience of young lovers and experienced culture seekers hardly moved a muscle for an hour and a half. Apparently we can still concentrate when the occasion demands it."
-Live at Hammer Museum Los Angeles, Review by Greg Burk, Metal Jazz
Let’s Work Together
I'm very open to collaborate, play, record and compose music for special events, films, theater works, dance, interdisciplinary projects, chamber and orchestra music and more..
Feel free to email me: info@motokohonda.com
