Maiko

Jazz violinist maiko’s new album Reminiscence is a milestone release for the Tokyo-based musician. It’s both a look back at her start 25 years ago when she moved to Tokyo and began to play jazz, as well as a gratitude-filled mark of appreciation to the many musicians she’s played with and the experiences she’s had through her years of development as live musician in Japan’s music scene. This is her twelfth album spanning those many years, but her prior album Solo was released in 2018 so it’s been several years between that and this 2024 work. In her online notes for this album, she explains how the unsteady times for musicians during the coronavirus period sparked a period of reflection on her Tokyo-based musical life and introspection about her next musical statement. For this project, she choose nine new songs she had written during that period, and settled on the musical partners she would bring this new record to life with. The process involved thinking back over those formative years spent with these and other co-musicians, and especially her hometown of Kobe where it all began. ...

The Tree of Life is a 2019 jazz release from bassist Daiki Yasukagawa, pianist Hitomi Nishiyama, and violinist Maiko. These are three musicians who are each leaders of their own projects in Japan with many recordings, side projects, and frequent live schedules. Bassist Yasukagawa and pianist Nishiyama have worked as a duo before and released two albums together, but this album, with Maiko on violin, is the trio’s debut as “The Tree of Life”, a band name that they will continue to use on their followup albums Mahoroba (2021) and New Hope (2022). ...

Echo, from 2024, is pianist/composer Hitomi Nishiyama’s latest album and a response to her previous release Dot from 2023. The music on this album was made with the same group and during the same recording sessions and as such, there are many similarities in sound and direction. In aura and conceptually, however, the differences are effectively portrayed by the separate covers and designs: Where Dot shows a monochrome sketch-like grid of hand-drawn dots, Echo places the pianists’ subtly Mona Lisa smile into a vividly abstract gauze of lilac and cobalt swirls and hues. ...

Dot is the 2023 album by pianist/composer Hitomi Nishiyama. Until this week’s release of Echo, Dot was her latest album; Echo is Dot ’s twin, recorded with the same members and during the same sessions. Nishiyama has released many great albums since 2004, and yet it is tempting to call this significant Dot her masterpiece. As a prolific composer with consistent album releases over two decades, many peaks have been reached. Dot forges into some bold new territory, and successfully so. ...

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. ...

Jazz violinist Maiko pours her heart and soul out on her 2018 release Solo, brimming with graceful elegance and drama through the resonance of her strings. Unaccompanied and pure, the sound is direct and full, as if listening to a private recital in a stately room. Despite performing alone without overdubs or effects, Maiko has the ability to establish a moving pulse with string accents and gorgeous multi-string harmonies, keeping listeners hooked and drawn into the music. ...

Jazz violinist Maiko trio live! Three captures a night in Tokyo in 2016, recorded live at The Glee concert hall and released as a CD and high-resolution download later that year. Jazz violinist Maiko leads the trio which includes well-known fusion guitarist Hiroki Miyano and popular in-demand pianist Shikou Ito. With violin, acoustic guitar, and piano strings resonating together to create dramatic music, comparisons could be made to fusion albums from Al Di Meola and Chick Corea. Yet Maiko’s trio is unique, combining years of experience with jazz, pop, classical, and Latin music, together with Japanese nuances for an energetic and engrossing event. ...