吉良創太

Songs in Motion is a 2018 release from guitarist Yudo Matsuo that he recorded with a quartet featuring Junichiro Ohkuchi on piano, Yoshimasa Otsuka on bass, and Sota Kira on drums. While this album follows his previous debut release Bonanza (2012), there was a full six years in between, so the guitarist/composer surely had a lot to say. As a result, Songs in Motion is an album full of his stored-up musical ideas and performances, and that spirit is bursting forth as the quartet’s energy lets loose. ...

From 2022, Breathe Beneath the Sun is pianist Mikiko Nagatake’s second release, a jazz piano trio recording that came out just one year after her debut album Into the Forest (2021). With the same members as on her first album, her trio includes Ryoji Orihara on fretless bass and Sota Kira on drums, two popular players in many Tokyo jazz groups. Another similarity between Nagatake’s first two albums is the addition of special guest horn players on a few songs. While the first album featured saxophonist Nami Kano on a bonus track, this album features two more saxophone guests well-known in the world of Japanese jazz, Kosuke Mine and Eiichi Hayashi, who join Nagatake as special guests for one track each near the end of the album. ...

Pianist Yusei Takahashi, bassist Keigo Iwami, and drummer Sota Kira are the three co-leaders of Setagaya Trio, a contemporary jazz group whose band name was inspired by meeting in the hip Shimokitazawa neighborhood of Tokyo’s Setagaya ward. This trio’s second album Progress was released in 2024 and follows their 2017 album Introducing Setagaya Trio, a debut released two years after their formation in 2015. Setagaya Trio’s concept is based on having all three players extend freely, rather than having one leader decide the group’s direction and style. This results in music that is freewheeling and fun with a risk-taking energy that is powered by their youthful, fresh attitude. The trio’s arrangements feel loose in a way, as if anything could happen, and they look forward to those unexpected surprises as challenges to meet head-on. At the same time, the tightness of their playing and arrangements is apparent, solid and effective. It’s an impressive bond arising from the extreme attention paid by each member to one another, no doubt paid off by their efforts and dedication to studied listening and practicing their art. ...

It was a surprise when Ami Fukui released even more new songs and arrangements with her trio on her release MCY (2023) so soon after her previous trio album Nova Manhã (2022). It does fit well, though, when considering the two albums as a set, as if they were a double album released in two parts. In fact, the songs for both albums were recorded during the same two-day recording session in November 2011. It was an opportune time, as the trio had plenty of live experience together, along with a nice batch of Fukui’s original songs to work with. ...

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. ...

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. ...

“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. ...