Mikiko Nagatake

Trumpeter Yuto Komatsu released his second album Defune in 2025, introducing nine new songs performed by his quartet that includes Mikiko Nagatake on piano, Daisuke Ijichi on bass, and Makoto Rikitake on drums. This new album is a follow-up seven years in the making after his 2018 debut release Circle of Dreams, marking his journey through the pandemic years and noting what he picked up along the way. His love of music sustained him through that unpredictable period, one that was particularly hard on independent musicians, as he discusses a bit in the liner notes. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

In welcome succession for eager fans, pianist Mikiko Nagatake released a batch of albums for the young jazz label Owl Wing based in Tokyo in recent years. Her works include two records as leader of a piano trio (Into the Forest, 2021, and Breathe Beneath the Sun, 2022), a solo album, a duo album with saxophonist Nami Kano (Jabuticaba, 2021), and a live album with trumpet player Tetsuji Yoshida (Live at Knuttle House, 2022). In fact, a new duo album (Locura de Amor, /2023)/ with flute player Naohiko Amatatsu was also just announced in the past several days. ...

Trumpeter Tetsuji Yoshida and pianist Mikiko Nagatake create new music in old town surroundings on 2021’s Live at Knuttel House. Yoshida’s original compositions make up the six songs for forty minutes selected from live performances at Knuttel art and live house. The modest venue is nestled in a working-class neighborhood in old Tokyo that seems to imbue the music with the charm and patina of the traditional surroundings. Yoshida’s conceptions skate around the borders of jazz, rock, and blues with hints of uniquely Japanese folk melodies, into which the talented pair freely incorporates traditional jazz forms. ...