Yuki Ito on Jazz of Japan | Brian McCrory

Yuki Ito Trio: Semendo Sementes

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Semendo Sementes is a jazz piano trio album from bassist Yuki Ito released in 2021. While bassist and composer Ito has recorded albums with different forms and combinations of musicians, and even a solo bass album, this is her first physical full-album release where she leads a piano trio. Joining her in the trio is pianist Yuka Yanigahara and drummer Hiro Kimura, regular members who were also on her previous digital mini-album release. As the leader for this group and live recording, for this set Ito plays original compositions that she wrote and arranged. To this set list, Ito includes one cover song, the old jazz standard “Time After Time” that was arranged by drummer Kimura.

Maiko: Reminiscence

Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Koto ha, To: Shiro o Matoeba

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Koto ha, To” is a three-member musical project made up of vocalist Ayako Tsuchiya, pianist Kozue Tsukayama, and bassist Yuki Ito. Their album is titled Shiro o Matoeba and was released in 2017.

To begin, a quick overview of the Japanese words in the band name and album title gives a nice first impression of the phrases, poetically vague as they may be. A translation of their band name (ことは、と in Japanese) would be something like “The Thing Is, …” or “About That, …”, and the album title (白をまとえば) something like When/If I Wear White.

Yuki Ito: Retattanni no Mori

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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!).