Our Concert Review of Junko Onishi @ The Catalina Bar & Grill | TheUrbanMusicScene.com

Junko Onishi – Catalina Bar & Grill – Tuesday April 5, 2011

Concert Review by A. Scott Galloway
Photos: Scott Mitchell

Pianist Junko Onishi graced Los Angeles jazz stages many years back as a side woman with the late, great jazz saxophonist Joe Henderson. Though she’s been recording as a leader since 1992, she just got around to making her L.A. club debut as a leader last Tuesday night at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood. She was leading a trio of bassist Dwayne Burno and drummer Gregory Hutchinson, musicians she’s played with in different contexts over the years, yet this was their first hit with her as a formal trio.

Junko established a synchronistic rapport right away with bassist Burno who she praised for making the date so shortly after health issues. He proved an exceptionally sensitive accompanist and soloist on all the pieces, especially the lovely “Bittersweet” on which he was featured. The same could not be said for Hutchinson whose playing was overly fussy and distracting. At one point he laid out altogether and still stuck out like a sore thumb. This could have been due to an opening night with little or no rehearsal, but in those cases it seems one would stick closer to a drum role of subtle support rather than capricious forays that can go awry – likely just an off night for the prolific vet.

To Onishi’s credit, her playing fared beautifully regardless. As the composer or arranger of all the pieces, she brought to them both astounding technical facility and emotional content at the piano. This was brilliantly evident on her composition “The Three Penny Opera,” a wildly eccentric piece filled with accelerating and decelerating tempos, straight swing sections and completely open portions – all of which she navigated with silken chording and seamless runs up and down the totality of the ivories A completely solo break in the middle was a breathtaking flashback to early piano styles of stride and rag. She was also engaging in an Ahmad Jamal piece (which really struck this writer as I had been thinking her playing echoed his earlier in the evening) and the standard “Never Let Me Go” which she opened, again, with a lovely unaccompanied intro solo.

Junko was also an engaging hostess, dressed in a black cocktail dress with matching heels. At the piano, the diminutive beauty sat perched on a cushy white designer pillow that perfectly fit the length of the stool (I’m thinking “custom job”). And when she addressed the audience, she always stood. Junko spoke forthrightly about the tragedy back home in Japan (she is from Kyoto) and asked for donations to help, insisting that proceeds from the evening’s sale of her latest CD, Baroque (Verve), too, would go to the cause. Her talent and spirit made the night one worth attending.

– A. Scott Galloway

(The Junko Onishi Trio plays Fri-Sat April 8 & 9 at The Iridium in New York City.)