\n<\/p>\n
Invited onto Tokyo\u2019s jazz circuit, he sat in on \u201cincredibly moving\u201d gigs with John Coltrane\u2019s drummer Elvin Jones in 1979 and \u201981. (Shimizu\u2019s bebop phrasings can be heard in \u201cL\u2019Automne \u00e0 P\u00e9kin,\u201d<\/a> his electronic revamp of the American songbook, from 1983.) He also formed lifelong partnerships with Sakamoto (who died in 2023<\/a>) and with touring regulars like the bassist Bill Laswell, who enlisted Shimizu into often raucous free improv sessions<\/a> at the Shinjuku Pit Inn, a Tokyo jazz club. \u201cHe has a voice<\/em>,\u201d Laswell said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n In Japan, the cello suites made Shimizu\u2019s reputation. The American composer Carl Stone heard them in the shopping center by his Tokyo home, \u201cliterally every day,\u201d he said in a phone interview. When they finally collaborated, Stone would manipulate the microphoned horn through electronics, then reamplify it back to the saxophonist, prompting Shimizu\u2019s colorful \u201cduo with himself,\u201d Stone said.<\/p>\n For the present tour, too, Shimizu will bring only one collaborator, Ray Kunimoto, 33, who will send his saxophone input through a cockpit of electronics, in real time, interweaving the live acoustic performance with beds of Shimizu\u2019s looped sound. They will play from Shimizu\u2019s compositions and some Bach.<\/p>\n This sound-on-sound method, with its exaggerated acoustic decays messing with how the duration of a piece is perceived, is a staple of his early electroacoustic work, especially \u201cKakashi\u201d and \u201cMusic for Commercials\u201d<\/a> (1987), a buoyant, propulsive suite of micro-compositions he created as jingles for Bridgestone, Seiko and other advertisers. Shimizu likened their recording to haiku, pulling from his synthesizer \u201ccollages of sounds and meanings.\u201d (For that work, Daniel Lopatin, an electronic producer known as Oneohtrix Point Never, called Shimizu \u201ca postmodern Bach\u201d in an email.)<\/p>\n