Albums

Singer Yoshiko Saita’s latest release is Back in Time to Boston, an album whose recording was both a homecoming and a musical trip down memory lane. It’s a trip not troubled by turbulence or misadventure, as the entire album occupies a relaxed, late-night mood that’s perfect for this combination of Saita’s rich voice and mellow delivery. Joining the singer is her old musical partner Kenny Werner on piano on all tracks, with Grégoire Maret adding harmonica to about half of the songs, with tracks alternating between duo and trio formats. In a room lush with reverb, Werner’s piano is elegantly pretty and Maret’s harmonica is wistfully bluesy, and both musicians know how to expertly support Saita’s voice in the spotlight. ...

Sketches by Motohiko Ichino is a 2007 jazz album featuring Ichino’s guitar trio and quartet playing his original music. At one hour and 5 minutes, the ten songs lay out an atmospheric and subtle sound, one where Ichino’s tonally rich guitar swings and sways with a warm, vintage electric sound through his songs. Ichino’s guitar is in the spotlight, naturally, as this is a guitarist’s album featuring his original compositions. As a guitar trio with acoustic bass and drums, Ichino takes up most of the melodic and harmonic duties as he spins the chord structures, theme statements, and most of the solo improvisation over the precise drum and bass structures. ...

Oxymoron is a live recording from saxophone player Akihiro Yoshimoto and bassist Takashi Sugawa. The duo recorded a live performance in 2016 at the jazz club Apollo in Tokyo, Japan, and released that recording as this album in 2017. Through the album’s eleven tracks and thirty-six minutes, Yoshimoto and Sugawa play free jazz and experimental music that pushes beyond the boundaries of standard jazz. The pair avoids the more easily identifiable trademarks of conventional music and songwriting to chase the free-flowing exchange of spontaneous ideas and sounds with few limits imposed. ...

Sara Smile is the second album from trumpeter Hikari Ichihara, released in 2006. This nine-track album is an alluring mix of jazz standards, pop covers, and a few of Ichihara’s original compositions. Ichihara’s group on this album is formed by drummer Lewis Nash, bassist Peter Washington, and pianist Adam Birnbaum. While the music is mostly played by the trumpeter’s quartet, the group expands with trumpeter Dominick Farinacci or sax player Grant Stewart stepping in to play with Ichihara on certain songs. Ichihara also switches between trumpet and flugelhorn for further variety in her playing and sound. ...

NordNode is a 2020 album from drummer Kazumi Ikenaga and pianist Taihei Asakawa, with ten tracks and fifty-five minutes of music performed with care, maturity, and a strong bond between the two musicians. This album captures a directly connected musical conversation between drummer Kazumi Ikenaga and pianist Taihei Asakawa. A duo made up of drums and piano is not a very common format in jazz, but it is a format that really shows how, like with the circular yin-yang symbol, the two musicians fit perfectly together and fill out the space as if thinking, moving, and playing as one. ...

Retattanni no Mori (Birch Tree Forest) is a 2019 solo album from bassist Yuki Ito. Over the album’s six tracks and 30 minutes, Yuki Ito is unaccompanied but unafraid with her formidable upright bass, playing three original compositions, two covers, and one free improvisation. It could be considered a brave endeavor to release a solo album on bass (or upright bass, aka double bass, contrabass, acoustic bass, upright, standup, or wood bass). As the great bassist Christian McBride humorously would put it, “I’m just the bass player”, a lighthearted play on a stereotype of the role (similarly, the title of his new album with bassist Edgar Meyer is /But Who’s Gonna Play the Melody? — /a double double bass album!). ...

Reiko Yamamoto’s The Square Pyramid is a jazz record built around her vivid and precise vibraphone sound. With excitement heightened by the targeted force and agility of four mallets striking and bouncing on the metal bars, the crystal clear and warmly sustained sounds of Yamamoto’s instrument pull the listener into the heart of the colorful structure through her compelling compositions. Written in Japanese, Reiko Yamamoto’s name is 山本玲子. Reiko (玲子) contains the kanji character 玲 which represents the sound of jewels and is used in several aural words invoking tinkling and chiming sounds. Whether or not that character had a direct influence on the musician’s life, it’s an appropriately fitting context for her masterful playing of this brilliantly translucent instrument. ...

Jazz singer MIWO’s first album is entitled Tranquillo from 2020. This fifty-one-minute album delivers a sincere and straightforward set of twelve jazz standards perfectly suited to the leader’s modestly beautiful voice. Tranquillo was produced by mentor Hiroko Williams, a well-known jazz singer in her own right, and the result is an album with an authentic approach to vocal-focused jazz albums. While some decorative intros, endings, and arrangements are subtly attached, the performances follow the original music closely to respectfully elevate the original compositions and allow the immediately felt vocals to shine. ...

Isolated is a 2024 album from the Otohito Fuse Trio, a piano-bass-drums jazz group of popular and in-demand young Japanese jazz players. Led by pianist Otohito Fuse, the eight-track CD runs for sixty-five minutes from a brilliantly modern jazz piano trio. As mentioned in the album notes, Fuse’s sound somewhat follows in the path of several heroes he thanks: Bill Evans, Lyle Mays, Keith Jarrett, and Yuya Wakai, respected influences popular with many fans and jazz musicians. ...

Erisa Ogawa (ERiSA) is a flutist, voice percussionist, and composer whose second album, /Where Have U Been? (/2019) is a jewel box of jazz and pop, mixed together into a smooth and stimulating album. Colorful like sprinkles on donuts, the vibrancy extends from the cover design and illustrations (also by Ogawa) down through to her music. Her flute playing is jazzy, quick, and skillful, obviously the result of years of dedication and study of jazz and flute, but can also be petal-soft with a charming, tremulous vibrato that tugs the at heartstrings for an extra emotional charge. ...

Project-N is the debut album from violinist Noriko Satomi, a classically trained violinist and “Nissan Presents Jazz Japan 2019” award winner. Satomi is active in the Japanese jazz live scene as a jazz violinist and graces many live spots with her beautiful string tone and charming presence. On this 67-minute album, Satomi leads a jazz quartet featuring Masaaki Imaizumi on piano, Kunio Oinuma on bass, and Masahiko Osaka on drums. This ambitious violinist released Project-N /in 2017, following up this debut with future releases /A Love Supreme (2019) and Duke String Quartet (2023), two excellent releases that focus her debut’s wide jazz spectrum into clear concept albums. ...

Frozen Dust is a live recording that captures guitarists Takumi Seino and Motohiko Ichino playing improvised jazz during their first set of the night at Kanmachi 63 in Yokohama. The two-track album is full of abstract improvisation throughout its forty-six minutes. The music is experimental to a degree, but close listening reveals musical themes within the subtle compositional frameworks and free improvisation. This first meeting of the pair demonstrates not only their guitar playing but also their liberal use of electric effects, adding modulated buzzes, textures, echoes, and filters to their mellow yet edgy musical tones. These guitar effects add a lot of personality to the music, setting up atmospheres that evolve from playful and curious to dark and intimidating. ...

Among the close to thirty album releases from pianist and composer Hitomi Nishiyama’s catalog, Calling (2021) is the third album recorded with one of her regular trios. This particular trio with bassist Yasuhiko “Hachi” Sato and drummer Kazumi Ikenaga is also featured on Nishiyama’s Sympathy (2013) and Music in You (2011). These three musicians have maintained close musical contact with occasional performances together since then, so this album is not only a long-awaited recording reunion but also a heartfelt response to various bittersweet events described in Nishiyama’s liner notes. ...

Fairway is a new Japanese jazz album recorded last year in New York and released in Japan just last month. Drummer Ko Omura, pianist Mikiko Nagatake, and bassist Kanoa Mendenhall form a trio known as eFreydut for this album. The gorgeously recorded music contains ten tracks of innovative and in-control original jazz with a running time of fifty-three minutes. As is natural for these creative jazz musicians, this album features mostly original music stamped with individuality. There are five contributions from drummer Omura, three from Nagatake, and one group improvisation from all three musicians. The one covered song is the beautiful ballad “Touch Her Soft Lips and Part” by Sir William Walton, played with exquisite clarity and sweetness, and reminiscent of the gentle interpretation on drummer Peter Erskine’s 1996 trio ECM album As it Is with John Taylor and Palle Danielsson. ...

Saxophonist and composer Nami Kano has just released a long-awaited album mawsim with her group of the same name today in Japan. Nami Kano’s name may be familiar as part of Jabuticaba from last week’s article, another compelling side of her creative musical personality. This five-song, 39-minute album has resulted from the accumulated experience as Nami Kano’s quartet, playing creative jazz and original music together for years around Japan. As a unit, they’ve performed their own great compositions and arrangements of music from innovative musicians like Keith Jarrett, Jaco Pastorius, and Carla Bley. Kano recently adopted the mawsim moniker for her group and album name, as their vision locked into a comfortable and multi-layered repertoire. ...

Jabuticaba is the self-titled debut record from pianist Mikiko Nagatake and saxophonist Nami Kano, two players active in the modern-day Japanese jazz scene as leaders of their own groups and members of other projects. Here on this 2021 release, these kindred spirits play eight songs, four originals and four reinterpreted cover songs from legends Carla Bley, Lee Konitz, and others. Based in jazz but extending beyond the genre, the music contains a great mix of moods: creatively jaunty, dark and brooding, fanciful, quirky, gentle and sensitive. The personality of the duo surfaces in fun and sensitive ways as the duo moves intuitively through shades of color, mood, and style. ...

Appreciation is pianist and composer Naoko Tanaka’s 2022 jazz release, her latest in a series of exciting new albums from young Japanese musicians. Several of her previous leader albums (Home, I Fall In Love Too Easily, Memories) featured her piano trio as a trio, which Appreciation also does. But this release also brings in the expert sounds of horn players Yoshiro Okazaki (trumpet), Takayuki Sato (alto sax), and Mabumi Yamaguchi (tenor sax) for three songs. In the rhythm section with the sparkling star are her regular trio members Koji Yasuda on bass and Masanori Ando on drums. ...

Pianist Chihiro Yamanaka’s thrilling series of jazz albums continues with her fifth audio release Lach Doch Mal, released in 2006 on Verve with twelve tracks at just under an hour’s runtime. A special edition CD release also contains an extra DVD containing an extra version of one of the songs. Like Yamanaka’s previous albums, Lach Doch Mal contains a mix of originals and covers rearranged in her creative style. Fans of her previous four albums know that her amazing piano improvisation and technique are a feature of her albums, and this release is no exception. ...

Memory Stones is the 2014 album from guitarist Hiroshi Fukutomi, his second album after his debut Rings of Saturn (2010). On this 57-minute recording of Fukutomi’s original music, the guitarist leads a quartet featuring Koichi Sato on piano and Rhodes, Koji Yasuda on bass, and Ryo Noritake on drums. With Fukutomi’s compositions and his guitar taking center stage, the quartet’s sound is definitely that of a jazz guitar leader’s band. The sound of the jazz guitar is varied, however, and his tone switches between mellow and fluid electric guitar sound to clear and articulate acoustic guitar, coloring the compositions with distinct personalities to suit the song style. Some guitar effects are also used tastefully to add textural layers while preserving the core sound of pure guitar expressiveness. ...

Polyglot is drummer Ko Omura, pianist Steve Barry, and bassist Kosuke Ochiai, an Australian-Japanese jazz trio project whose first album Talk, Vol. 1 was released in 2020. Each member contributes original music for the 58-minute album’s eight tracks, with five from the pianist, two from the drummer, and one from the bassist. Similar to great jazz trios like those of Bill Evans and others, equal partnership is apparent as each member participates actively in the group sound to fill the space with cooperative creativity. While Barry’s piano is the leading voice for many of the theme statements, Omura’s drums and Ochiai’s bass follow and influence the twists, turns, and accents of the multi-cornered melody lines, resulting in a full and fascinating sound. ...

Pianist Ami Fukui continues her original jazz journey with Nova Manhã, her fourth leader album from 2022 with eight tracks running at about 45 minutes. As with her previous releases Urban Clutter (2010), Amizm (2013), and New Journey (2016), this creative musician focuses her original music on the specific sound of her trio and her concept this time out. Seven of the eight tracks on this album are her own compositions. Her music is often colorful, perhaps with more calming hues on this release, and her unique blend of cool beats and pop melodies with a soulful smile runs through the music. ...

Humadope 2 from trumpeter Keisuke Nakamura features his quintet playing modern jazz originals with unsupressible energy. With a slightly different lineup as on his debut album Humadope (2014), the human/mad/dope sound is the same: fresh and boiling, jazzy and nonstop. No doubt Nakamura’s vision extends through the material, from the steampunk-ish cover to the song titles that describe a fantastical, searching aesthetic. And, of course, this influence carries through to the music, artfully composed with originality and serving as a beautiful post-bop platform for each musician’s improvisation. ...

Pianist Yuka Yanagihara’s second piano trio album is Inner Views from 2019, where she plays eight of her original songs in a piano trio format with bassist Yoshiki Yamada and drummer Ryo Noritake. In harmony with the album’s title and cover image, the music is on the whole introspective, focused on the near rather than the far. As Yanagihara puts it herself, these are eight songs that focus on the landscape of one’s mind. ...

“Hard bop jazz aimed towards the universe” might be a good way to introduce soprano saxophonist Hiroko Mase’s debut album First Contact from 2020. Together with her double-sax quintet, the album features ten of her original songs in a vibrant arrangement of energetic hard-swinging and mid-tempo songs brimming with atmospheric layers. The opening song “First Contact” together with #4 “Spinning Petals” (a live version is included in a video below) and #9 “Have Fun”!” prop up the album’s core jazz tentpoles with straight-ahead frameworks reminiscent of the sound of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and Cannonball Adderley’s bands: energetic rhythm sections that frame unleashed improvisation from double horn front-lines. ...

The album Faces from 2020 is the follow-up to vocalist Kaoru Azuma and pianist Hitomi Nishiyama’s first album Travels (2013). As with the earlier work, this album features mostly original compositions from the pianist that are delicately adorned with the light and airy voice of Azuma, who adds lyrics and instrument-like vocalizing to the music. Along with Azuma and Nishiyama are the same members as before, guitarist Motohiko Ichino, saxophonist Ryosuke Hashizume, and bassist Toru Nishijima. On the tracks, the five musicians play in different combinations including a duo, trios, quartets, and the full quintet for subtle variations in sound, structure, and solo space. ...

This special release from Baby Brothers, entitled Happy Christmas with Bb (side b, the final live at plug and more), warmly celebrates the holidays and commemorates the vocal quintet’s final performance in 2007, layering bittersweet emotions with abundantly joyful singing and expression. The album starts with eight tracks performed and recorded in concert. This live portion features the a capella quintet using their voices in beautiful harmony with charming arrangements from their repertoire including the classic jazz standard “My Favorite Things”, some jazzy soul and pop selections, and three well-known Japanese songs. ...

Uta Oto from sax player Miyuki Moriya is a modern jazz album full of emotion and spirit… a bit spiritual, even. The music created by Moriya’s trio ranges from brooding and wistful, to simple cheer, folk, free, and comforting. As the music plays the mood passes from somber strife to resurgence like a theme hinted at in the liner notes, a story of rejuvenation through musical inspiration and partnership. In addition to playing original jazz with her long-running quartet, Moriya has also led less common formations including drummer-less trios (with sax, piano, bass), bass-less trios (sax, piano, drums), and chord-less trios (sax, bass, drums), as well as groups focused on the music of famous Japanese jazz musicians and composers. ...

As a companion piece to the previous article on Hideaki Hori’s /Horizon/, this follow-up post introduces the pianist’s recent solo album Melodies for Night & Day from 2022. Posting about the same musician in succession here is rare but somewhat appropriate, as this new album also pairs well with the pianist’s debut album from the previous article, marking a twenty-year milestone and a total of twenty albums released under his name in those years. ...

Jazz pianist Hideaki Hori kicked off his recording career 20 years ago, and it all started with this debut album Horizon from 2003. Since then, he’s released another 20 albums as leader in his nearly 30-year career under his own name or as the group “Encounter” with saxophonist Wataru Hamasaki. As a session musician and recording partner, Hori has also played on more than 160 albums for many notable Japanese and international acts including “Dreams Come True”, “Paris Match”, Eddie Henderson, Mabumi Yamaguchi, and many others. It’s an impressive resume for an accomplished pianist who’s still actively playing live music somewhere in front of an audience almost every day. ...

Trombonist Nanami Haruta’s debut release II from 2022 is another great example of new jazz albums from new players that keep flowing to the hands and ears of eager fans. Haruta, a young player who has been making an impact in the Japanese jazz scene, has been frequently featured as both leader and guest member at various live shows. In addition to this debut, she has also participated in other recent recordings such as 64 Charlesgate (2022) and For My Lady (2023). ...