The Maki-Smith Duo

Last year, I had the good fortune to have the talented Nora Maki fill in as the keyboardist in my Unidentified Flying Quartet. Nora was great and as it turned out, was eager to venture into the world of the piano and drum "duos" with me. Nora came from a classical and straight ahead background, but was quite familiar with the electric worlds of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and more recently, Hiromi. Together, we looked at the great Joe Zawinul and Trilok Gurtu duo; the Bill Bruford duos with Patrick Moraz and later, Michiel Bosrtlap; finally, and most recently, the Marco Benevento and Joe Russo Duo.

Each had a style all it's own, a character and an unmistakable identity. My last musical outings were ironically, also borne from duos; first with 7 string bassist Edo Castro was amazing with his loops, Ebow and bass synth; and earlier, with my long-time keyboardist Seth Elgart, sadly an inconvenient three thousand miles away in NYC with his collection of every synthesizer known to man. Fortunately for me, Nora arrived just in time, and eager to delve in the world of loops, samples, sequences, laptops and effects.

Nora was born in Osaka, Japan and started her first piano lesson at age 6. She told me she, "studied classical piano with Katsuyuki Mastui and musicianship with Masaru Adachi at Osaka College of Music." Encountering jazz music in her late teens has changed her way of making music to her own terms. She studied the piano style of Art Tatum; Oscar Peterson with Minoru Ozone. Interested in jazz; American culture, she was exposed herself to a broad range of American music from Miles Davis to James Brown. After immigrating to United States of America in 1989, she went back to school and studied advanced jazz arrangement, theory, harmony & history and jazz combo under the direction of Andrew Speight at San Francisco State University.

Nora's great passion for music has brought her to much broader music communities; sharing the bandstand with many Bay area musicians. Nora is not only working on recording music for our new Maki-Smith Duo album, she's also preparing to record her upcoming all-acoustic, piano and bass album.

I've also been fortunate enough for Nora to agree to reprise her appearance in the UFQ, and now alongside the aforementioned Edo Castro and saxophonist Rich Berman, so stay tuned...