♫♪  Trouble Kaze - “June (Part II)”

The middle school band leader hurled a music stand at one of the drummers, not in the Whiplash-tough-love fashion, but rather just because it was Wednesday. This wasn’t all that long ago, maybe 18 years back. Nobody got fired or reprimanded or anything. The kid eventually changed schools though. Not that he had it (a metal stand) coming, but the teachers’ lounge definitely had him pegged as a trouble case. Speaking of, a saxophone case or two might’ve flown his way that semester as well.

Remember the warm-up noise before the conductor arrived? The cross-chatter of brass, woodwinds and percussion, out of tune and time, free and unsupervised. When school districts really get serious about the importance of the arts, that cacophony will be the concert, and “A Touch of Baroque” or whatever will be the warm-up. The substitute teacher will show Who’s Crazy? instead of The Sound of Music, and band leaders will throw music stands at walls rather than children, as a gesture of solidarity, not a crescendo of impotent rage.

Trouble Kaze is a sextet combining the Kaze quartet of pianist Satoko Fujii, drummer Peter Orins, and trumpeters Natsuki Tamura and Christian Pruvost with pianist Sophie Agnel and drummer Didier Lasserre. June was recorded at La Malterie in Lille, France and is out now on Circum-Disc.

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CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

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