Takashi Matsunaga, Ride Five Review

Takashi Matsunaga’s Ride Five: Form Without Repetition

by Ferell Aubre

How can two improvisers create the feeling of form without depending on literal repetition? On Ride Five, pianist Takashi Matsunaga and bassist Christian McBride answer that question by listening for what the other plays, and for what an idea might become. A moving inner voice, a rhythmic cell, an interval, a shift of register or even a cadence can become inspiration for an enjoyable and developing performance. The music’s structure emerges in the moment through development, response and memory.

In an exposed piano-and-bass duo, there is nowhere for a musical decision to disappear into the ensemble. Matsunaga’s richly layered piano language and McBride’s ability to move between foundation, counterline and melodic voice make that transparency an advantage. Their exchanges reveal how quickly a musical gesture can change function once the other player recognizes its structural possibilities.

“Time in Motion” establishes the duo’s chemistry and groove. Matsunaga begins alone, playing rubato with a light, warm touch. His harmony remains tonal while drawing much of its character from contrary motion and activity within the inner voices. Rather than presenting harmony as a succession of static sonorities, he keeps lines moving inside the chords. McBride enters gradually and listens into that movement.

As the performance grows more active, the relationship becomes increasingly reciprocal. McBride moves through different registers and introduces more pronounced rhythmic figures; Matsunaga responds without abandoning the harmonic colors established at the beginning. When the piano develops a defined ascending motive across the keyboard, the bass catches its direction and joins the climb. Activity accumulates until the two arrive at a cadence together. Then they release it.

That release let’s the preceding virtuosity have space, giving the performance punctuation and establishes a boundary before another idea assumes importance. The form is felt. Later, McBride leads with a quick repeated figure while Matsunaga responds. Leadership consequently remains fluid within Matsunaga’s compositional environment. The piece has shape through a succession of musical agreements.

“Unfolding Drops” shows that those agreements do not have to be harmonic. Matsunaga initially creates sparse, almost chorale-like movement. Upper structures and close intervallic tensions add friction, yet the voice leading gives the harmony direction. When an ascending inner figure develops, McBride responds to the movement within the harmony rather than merely supplying its bottom note. Elsewhere, a descending bass phrase temporarily pulls the music toward a darker minor coloration, and Matsunaga immediately incorporates that implication into the next stage of the exchange.

The organizing emphasis eventually shifts. A more rhythmic piano figure appears; McBride moves lower and locks into its profile. A pedal tone reduces harmonic motion enough for rhythm to become the foreground event, and what had been flexible pulse develops into a defined groove. Just as importantly, the musicians do not have to remain there. The rhythmic structure eventually releases, and freer conversational space returns.

That ability to change what carries the structure is central to Ride Five. Movement is a foundation of every performance, form frame the harmonic progression. Sometimes coherence comes from voice leading; elsewhere it comes from pulse, register, interval, repetition, dynamics or phrase shape. Matsunaga and McBride sense when one of those elements has acquired enough weight to become the subject of the conversation.

“Pure, Becoming” has Its opening in a rhythmic and staccato pattern, with Matsunaga shaping richly voiced chords through accents and dynamics. McBride moves with the emerging pulse. Rolling arpeggios begin filling the spaces, and the texture expands. Matsunaga moves between chordal layers, upper-register lines and broad multi-octave figures while McBride alternates between grounding the harmony and participating in its internal motion.

The distinction that McBride does not behave only as the bassist beneath Matsunaga’s harmony gives the duet forward motion. He hears moving lines inside it. At points his response follows the direction and color of Matsunaga’s inner voice leading, making the bass another participant in the counterpoint. The duo can consequently sound larger than its instrumentation suggests: bass movement, interior lines, upper-register activity and melodic gestures remain independently audible even as the density increases.

Then “Pure, Becoming” does something more than building toward greater activity. The musicians return to the more rhythmic, staccato behavior heard earlier. It is not an exact reprise. It is a memory of the opening condition.

That communication gets close to the heart of the album. Form does not require Matsunaga and McBride to reproduce the same notes. They can remember a relationship, or an articulation, rhythmic disposition, register, or harmonic atmosphere. The level of density moves in the moment and recreates a relationship with that material. The listener recognizes the return because the musical behavior is familiar even though its surface has changed. Improvisation therefore gains formal memory without sacrificing its ability to keep becoming something new.

The closing “Untamed Drift.” Matsunaga begins with open upper-register chords and a spacious, almost Romantic atmosphere. McBride enters arco, his sustained tone creating a striking contrast with the piano’s moving harmony. Descending bass movement prompts a response from Matsunaga, and small intervals and motives begin acquiring greater significance.

When Matsunaga presents a three-note idea, McBride shifts to pizzicato and answers with the same notes. What begins as one player’s gesture becomes common material. Later McBride initiates his own compact rhythmic motive and Matsunaga picks it up. A sixteenth-note pulse generates forward motion; register and activity expand; the musicians build toward another cadence. Then the pressure drops and space returns.

The pattern recurs without becoming formulaic. When an idea appears, its possibilities become shared, both musicians develop it, intensity accumulates, and a cadence or reduction in activity clears the field. Because either player can initiate the next event, the music remains conversational without becoming shapeless.

“Untamed Drift” also demonstrates that this memory can operate across a larger arc. After the middle of the performance explores increasingly active exchanges and wide instrumental ranges, McBride returns to the bow. Matsunaga’s touch becomes lighter, the texture opens, and the spacious harmonic character of the beginning reappears. Once again, they do not return by reconstructing an earlier passage note for note. They return to its atmosphere and relationship. As the final track, that receding activity gives Ride Five an especially satisfying sense of arrival.

Matsunaga’s theoretical interests provide useful context for hearing this harmonic flexibility, but Ride Five does not need to function as a demonstration to make its musical argument. What matters on the recording is audible: harmony continually presents possibilities for continuation. Inner voices can become melodic information, bass movement can redirect harmonic color, a pedal point can transfer attention toward rhythm, and an interval can become the seed of the next passage.

McBride is an ideal partner for that environment because his listening is matched by the breadth of his instrumental role. His resonant pizzicato sound can provide foundation without confining him to it; his lines travel freely into melodic registers, and his arco playing on “Untamed Drift” introduces an entirely different dimension of sustain and color.

Matsunaga, meanwhile, combines a remarkably controlled piano touch with a harmonic language rich in counterpoint, close tensions, moving inner parts and expansive multi-register gestures. Both possess formidable technique, but technique becomes consequential here because each can react to the other’s ideas without breaking their trajectory.

Ride Five is Matsunaga and McBride creating a feeling of form not by eliminating uncertainty or insisting on literal repetition, but by remembering relationships as they create the music together. Motives are shared material, harmonic implications become directions to cadences, and space allows another possibility to emerge. Form becomes a shared understanding of where the music has been, what it is becoming, and when an idea has arrived.