Conductor turns out to be dancer: Miho Hazama leads KC Jazz Big Band

On Friday 20 September, Grammy-nominated composer Miho Hazama led the Royal Conservatory of Music's big band at the Conservatory Hall in Amare. And how.

Dancer in nowhere

A leap. A plié on one leg. A relevé on the toes. A plié on two legs. The head to the side and rhythmically to the other side and back like a clock. A half arabesque and some kind of glissade. But especially a lot of port de bras: the better arm work.

Miho Hazama could so dance the dying swan, that famous pas seul by choreographer Michel Fokine. Smooth, silky nodding movements of her wrists and hands, arms outstretched questioningly to the collective of jazz students in front of her.

She wants to make them move and encourage. With big movements from bottom to top as if she wants to lift a huge block or even the whole horn section. She makes small movements before she starts to deploy one of her compositions. Sometimes she withdraws completely to the side to give the players all the space they need.

Own work

Besides compositions by Herbie Hancock and Thelonious Monk, the programme includes four works by Miho Hazama.

The first composition Tokyo Confidential as modern jazz, is immediately fascinating. Drummer Leo Giger bravely begins the piece of music that is cleverly tricky, has tempo changes and changes in a rich palette of sounds. It is not for nothing that Hazama was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album category.

The title of the album? Dancer In Nowhere. 

Somnambulant is also fascinating. A world of sleepwalking in which you are taken through different sleep stages. Slow and magical at first and then rhythmically accelerating. Striking besides the droll Minis March is Miho's fourth composition tonight: Your Scenery Story.

Inspired by that miserable period we called pandemic. The petite Hazama explains that she created this work while sitting lonely in her flat during the lockdown in New York. She imagined all kinds of journeys and wanted to share those journeys with her listeners. It characterises the positivity of the now 37-year-old composer and conductor.

Contrast

Not exactly what you would expect from the leader of a big band. This genre of music is known to be male-dominated. In this, Hazama is a salutary presence and she knows how to get the most out of the students of the Jazz Department of the Royal Conservatoire.

Those students are fresh from summer only just getting into school. After all, it is only September 20. To stage an event so organised in a week is phenomenal, and completely unthinkable in the dance world.

There were also already opportunities to excel. For Leo Giger (already mentioned) and horn players Antonio Sanchez Torralbo and Khin Zheng, among others.

Another concert by the KC Jazz Big Band can be expected in November. Meanwhile, the ambitious Miho Hazama, also known in the Netherlands for her collaboration with the Metropole Orchestra, will tour the US with her programme Beyond Orbits.

She is so busy with her hectic travel schedule over the next few months. She is therefore not quick to explain to me why she previously won the title Dancer in Nowhere chose. We can only guess at it. I'll just take a guess: the answer is deeper, intriguing and layered. Just like her music.