Transition

Transition was a group started in the November of 1971 when the Taj-Mahal Travellers were staying in Brussels, Belgium. TMT members Takehisa Kosugi and Ryo Koike hooked up with Belgium musicians Jacques Bekaert and Michel Herr to form this quartet. They played a mixture of compositions (by Kosugi, Bekaert, George Cacioppo and possibly others) as well as improvisations. Jacques' wife, the American fashion designer author Shirly Johnson, designed costumes for the group. It seems that Belgian musician Marc Moulin may have sat in with them on occasion as well. Though the group only last through 1972, they notably appeared at the ICES festival in August of that year playing along side Gentle Fire and Mustapha Tettey Addy. By the end of 1972, Jacques Bekaert presented a concert as Transition West at Mills College. Sadly, the only recording of the group which has surfaced is a very small fragment of the above mentioned ICES concert which appears as part of a piece on Jacques Bekaert's LP on Igloo.