Pianist Miki Hayama creates superb jazz on Wide Angle, exploring powerful, edge-of-your-seat quickness with modern dimensions. This album is her third as a leader and received awards from the Japanese jazz magazine Swing Journal in 2009 and 2010.

With the album title perhaps being a nod to the angular McCoy Tyner-ish style of playing that Hayama excels at, the music is full of various moods. Hayama’s trio thrives on quick tempo and high-energy improvisation, a great platform for the pianist’s skill with rapid patterns and leaping bursts. Her agile solos are full of notes which seem to climb and swirl and fall into place like musical puzzle pieces. At mid-tempo songs and slower ballads, her graceful side shows an impressive command of modern jazz piano and smartly constructed arrangements.

In addition to straight-ahead locomotion, other angles are explored: wisps of fantasy ala Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock (“Flying Horses”, “Sound of Migration”), relaxing moods (“Who Cares”, “A Time For Peace”), some two-handed doubling on the odd-metered “Freight Trane”. The mesmerizing “Dismissed” lays out yet another dimension, where Hayama’s piano is at times doubled with her voice, a beautiful shadowing for poignant deepness.

Wide Angle by Miki Hayama Trio

• Miki Hayama - piano
• Kiyoshi Kitagawa - bass
• Victor Lewis - drums

Released in 2009 on ART UNION/@jazz as ARTCD-114.

Japanese names: 早間美紀 Hayama Miki 北川潔 Kitagawa Kiyoshi

Audio and Video

• A track from this album, Tommy Flanagan’s “Freight Trane”:

• Miki Hayama in 2008 playing “There Is No Greater Love”:

• Miki Hayama playing a live version of “Horizon”:

• Excerpt from track #1: “ワッツ・ネクスト？ (What’s Next?)”

Jazz of Japan #41 • Apr 19, 2018 • Brian McCrory