Shinya Fukumori Trio: For 2 Akis

Apr 26, 2025

For 2 Akis is a 2018 release from the trio of Japanese drummer Shinya Fukumori, French saxophonist Matthieu Bordenave, and German pianist Walter Lang. This album from the Munich-based trio is the realization of Fukumori’s long-held desire to record for the German ECM label. The recording itself was made at a studio in the South of France, a location that evokes scenes of peaceful warmth and slow serenity. In addition to the music, it is perhaps this picturesque presence that was also captured in Fukumori’s concept and the trio’s playing on For 2 Akis.

Modern jazz records on the ECM label are sometimes described as having a tangible ambience: slow, experimental music living in wide-open crystal-clear recordings, where the reverberation seems to be used as an instrument. Even the CD booklets with their museum-oriented images and minimal text speak quietly of quality, careful curation of artists, and attention to detail. Drummer/bandleader Fukumori’s release For 2 Akis is right in line with this reputation. Added to those characteristics is the gratitude and humility carried in the album title’s meaning as a dedication to two early supporters of Fukumori.

The music on this album, like the natural world, can be serene but serious. While listening, one choice is to let it wash around you and allow the music to establish a soundscape as it happens. Pay as much or as little attention as you like, yet the mood sinks in still. Another choice is to let the music in freely and completely, becoming absorbed as it flows through you and washes the world away. Fukumori used similar words when describing the influence that the Showa era of Japanese pop songs had on him: “Music was a way to escape from the reality, but at the same time to be aware of it.” With this, he draws a parallel to the American blues form. (More of Fukumori’s words can be found on the ECM Records page for this album.)

Another fascinating thing about the music on this album is the time span covered by the songs. The modern compositions from Fukumori, Bordonave, and Lang are balanced by their interpretations of older Japanese songs. There is the early J-Pop era in Japan with the poignant “Mangetsu no Yube” (evening of the full moon), a hopeful anthem reflecting on loss and suffering after the Great Hanshin (Kobe) Earthquake of 1995. The graceful “Ai San San” (love radiantly) from 1986 has emotional enka and kayokyoku roots, and seems simple but is deep and moving. The older songs “Hoshi Meguri no Uta” (song of the circling stars) and “Koji no Tsuki” (moon over castle ruins), are from 1918 and 1901 respectively, and are filled with the sense of traditional Japanese sensibilities and poetic folk moods.

Incidentally, “Koji no Tsuki”, used as the first part of Fukumori’s “Light Suite”, is a song that has been interpreted by Thelonious Monk (as “Japanese Folk Song”), guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, and the rock band Scorpions.

The wide range of years found in the song selection here brings something extra to the music, eliciting an awareness of how emotion can be timelessly stored and transmitted through the exquisite performances of the songs’ evocative melodies, and the unified rising from that, improvisationally and spontaneously.