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In junior high school, he formed a band that completely copied the Bill Evans Trio.
Ezaki: You began piano lessons, and your interest in classical music was sparked when you came across Grieg’s Nocturne, a collection of lyric pieces.
Ezaki: Yes, I did. It was the piece I was able to play most successfully after I started learning piano. For some reason, I really got into it when I played it. The image of the piece was very compatible with me, and for the first time I felt that I was very happy to be able to express it. Until then, when I learned Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc., I often felt intimidated or didn’t understand what they were trying to say, but with Grieg, I thought, “I understand something! I thought. I think I was in the middle or upper grades of elementary school, and from there I gradually began to feel like I was actively engaged in music.
A few years later, Seicho Matsumoto’s novel “Suna no Kiki” was dramatized, and Akira Senju wrote a piano piece called “Shukumei. It was so wonderful that I practiced it incessantly, and for a while I bought the orchestral score and read it over and over (laughs). (Laughs.) Even though it was a piano concerto, I arranged it for a single piano and performed it at a festival in Fukuoka, my hometown.
Is that when you started writing songs?
Ezaki: I’ve been composing music since I was in the first grade of elementary school. My piano class required us to write one original song a year, and I liked composing more than practicing. When I was in sixth grade, I got into “Shukumei” and performed it at festivals, where I also performed my own original compositions.
I heard that you got into jazz when you entered junior high school and met Bill Evans.
Ezaki: I think it was when I was going from sixth grade to first grade. I picked up “Waltz For Debby,” which was sitting on the dining room table, and played it, and I thought, “This is exactly what it means to be struck by lightning” (laughs). I thought to myself, “This is the kind of piano I want to play. Of course, I was impressed when I heard “Fate,” but it was on a different level.
Ezaki: I was fortunate in that I had a friend in piano class who played the drums, and a senior double bass player in the junior high school orchestra, so I thought, “I can play in the Bill Evans Trio! (laughs). Soon I was practicing with a band that was a complete copy of the Bill Evans Trio.
