Osami Mizuno, a jazz drummer from Japan, who has dedicated a great deal of his life to preserving and promoting the memory, philosophy, and playing techniques of the late legendary Alan Dawson.
Osami Mizuno played to an audience of 13.000 people at the Yokohama Arena http://www.beats-paradise.jp/osami_pv.m4v
DAWSONISMS: We are based on the group called "Dawsonisms" named by the founder of Modern Drummer Ron Spagnardi, which is the group of drummers who are trying to keep Alan Dawson's great treasure and legacy alive.
He created a so-named drum school and record label, with Dawson’s widow’s blessing, and he’s written three volumes devoted to presenting the in-depth aspects of what made the acclaimed Berklee drum set instructor such a powerful influence. It would be an understatement to say that Osami is a man on a mission.
Osami met Dawson while studying at Berklee in the 1970’s. There he also met and befriended Vinnie Colaiuta, a fellow student of the master, and in 2006, the two collaborated on a book that explained several of Vinnie’s core advanced drumming concepts, some of which were inspired by his own studies with Dawson. That book is Illusions in Rhythm for Drum Set.
I’d heard of this book a few years ago, but I never saw in any music stores. Then recently, I connected with Osami through Facebook. I honestly can’t recall who first friended whom, but it doesn’t really matter, because what resulted was making contact with a guy who can explain Vinnie. And believe me, that’s intense…
Illusions in Rhythm for Drum Set is an 83-page mental workout that walks you through how to essentially create time within time within time. Section 1 begins with counting exercises and explorations of how basic triplet and more complex polyrhythmic divisions can be grouped within and across the bar, within the context of 4/4.
These preliminary exercises warm you up for the main event, found in Section 2, that introduces Superimposed Metric Modulation. Vinnie coined this term, and as Vinnie and Osami convey it, SMM layers one or more new pulses over an existing pulse, often extended over the bar. The original pulse maintains its tempo, but the secondary ones sound either faster or slower, or both at the same time, yet still occur proportionately within the entire time framework.
Section 3 focuses on exercises for soloing, using the previous two sections as foundation. Simple rhythmic themes, such as a group of 16th note triplets and rests, are introduced and then transformed into contexts of repeated patterns in clusters in varying metric contexts. When you are finally able to see and recognize these patterns’ absolute same-sound forms in the different relative contexts, a very enlightening transformation occurs. In 1987, almost thirty years ago, Vinnie visited Japan and first demonstrated SMM using a sequencer. He was light years ahead with this new concept, that of shifting time within time within time, but Osami latched onto it, and with tremendous personal dedication and publishing effort, he produced an extraordinary text with collaboration from an equally extraordinary drummer.
Both men were inspired by a teacher they revered. Illusions in Rhythm for Drum Set is a tribute to that reverence, and within its challenging pages lay the secrets to much of Vinnie Colaiuta’s temporal genius. For Osami Mizuno, this labor of love gives his own drumming and personal life great purpose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Dawson Alan Dawson: From Wikipedia, Alan Dawson (July 14, 1929 — February 23, 1996) was a respected jazz drummer and widely influential percussion teacher based in Boston. Dawson is best remembered as an early teacher of Tony Williams, and Other former students include: Terri Lyne Carrington, Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Smith,Kenwood Dennard, many others. He began teaching at Berklee College of Music in 1957. Dawson's teaching methods have been passed on by many of his former students. Books on his approach have been written by John Ramsay and Osami Mizuno, both former students.
The legacy of Alan Dawson is broad, yet not as widely discussed as other drummers of his era. But when you learn that Dawson’s first student was a young Boston drummer named Tony Williams, you may find yourself wanting to know a great deal more about the man and his percussive progeny. Osami Mizuno is hoping you will, and is very much looking forward to sharing that knowledge with drummers around the world. http://home.att.ne.jp/delta/osami/ [Illusions in Rhythm for Drum Set is available directly from Osami’s website, via PayPal.]
D a w s o n i s m s Rudimental Symposium Online
http://www.drum.com.tw/download/stuff/0501%20rud%20symp.pdf
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View by Osami Mizuno.