Takuya Kuroda: Hot and Horny

Live Review

Feb 14

Takuya Kuroda smashed at Crystal Ballroom on Thursday, 9 February 2023.

The Japanese jazz trumpeter played selections from his latest album Midnight Crisp and more.

There was a rumor floating around the pit in the elegant confines of Crystal Ballroom that Takuya Kuroda was responsible for the Animal Crossing: New Horizons soundtrack.

Let’s squash that fake news right now. Kazumi Totaka is the composer behind the music for the Nintendo game that reached such incredible heights of popularity in America during the pandemic.

But wouldn’t it be fantastic if Takuya Kuroda had a chance to create his own soundtrack for the virtual world?

With his formative years of study in New York City (and Boston!), the jazz trumpeter would bring a different mood: bigger, brassier, beaming with the moon energy of the city that never sleeps. Nintendo developers need to rethink the virtual world of Animal Crossing within the context of a cityscape.

Can we suggest, Animal Crossing: Midnight Critters? The game takes place in a parallel, cartoon dimension to the Big Apple. All your favorite characters within the game find their way in the big city. Tom Nook runs a bodega. K.K. Slider busks on the subway. Blathers curates at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The possibilities are endless!

Takuya Kuroda

Until we get the Takuya Kuroda video game experience, we’ll content ourselves with the live show. He brought a five-piece to the Crystal Ballroom at Davis Square in Somerville, Massachusetts. A keyboard, bass guitar, drums, saxophone, and, of course, a trumpet.

There’s a real positive energy to a Kuroda set. No one is a bigger booster of his players than the frontman himself, who stepped to the side while his bandmates wailed. In the classic tradition of live jazz performance, every member got their due with extended solos. Standouts include: keyboard solos that channeled Zelda themes; several saxophone solos that tore exciting holes in each song; and a playful duet between Kuroda’s trumpet and the saxophonist later in the set.

The percussionist deserves mention in a paragraph all his own. He was a standout among standouts, maintaining an energy throughout the set that buoyed the contributions of the other members. Kuroda’s jazz paints a beautiful geometry with his trumpet, and precision drumming is a critical element to the polygonal enterprise. Extra points for his wild drum set up: he had a three-ply cymbal that looked like a stack of floppy brass pancakes. Unique sound.

Takuya Kuroda interlaced personal anecdotes between songs throughout the evening. He’s been living in the Northeast since 2003, so he’s got plenty to share about life in America, including an early stint as a young student at Berklee College of Music. The Crystal Ballroom show on Thursday may have been his first show in Boston as “his own thing,” but he’s played with other groups countless times in the Hub and surrounding parts. So let’s call it a minor “homecoming,” and the locals were glad to have him.