Japanese jazz musician Yuko Miyawaki’s debut album Song of Flower from 2011 brims with understated calm, burning steadily through original, mellow sounds and sparkling improvisation. Miyawaki’s trumpet and flugelhorn centers her core jazz quartet, adding a fifth member on tenor sax to embellish her jazz themes with sweet harmonies and cutting solos on four tracks.

In addition to her compelling horn playing, Miyawaki’s contributions also include original songs and arrangements, all showing a creative style with modern themes calmly developing over sharp grooves with fascinating frameworks. The selected cover songs include a great modern jazz version of the Japanese folk song “Sakura”, the atmospheric latin tune “El Choclo”, “Summer Night” in uptempo swing, and a tender duo with guest pianist Junichiro Ohkuchi (joining on five songs) on the heartful ballad “I’m Glad There Is You”.

Song of Flower by Yuko Miyawaki

• Yuko Miyawaki - trumpet, flugelhorn
• Yutaka Handa - tenor sax
• Taeko Kurita - piano
• Yutaka Kaido - bass
• Masashi Tomikawa - drums
• Junichiro Ohkuchi - piano (tr. #3, 5, 6, 8, 9)

Released in 2011 on Coume Music as DQC-614.

Japanese names: 宮脇裕子 Miyawaki Yuko 伴田裕 Handa Yutaka 栗田妙子 Kurita Taeko カイドーユタカ Kaido Yutaka 冨川政嗣 Tomikawa Masashi 大口純一郎 Ohkuchi Junichiro

Audio and Video

• Yuko Miyawaki performing “Sakura” live in 2011:

• Excerpt from track #1: “SAKURA”

Jazz of Japan #111 • Mar 11, 2020 • Brian McCrory