Music Salon Natural is a concert venue in Mitaka, a small town to the west of Tokyo. The town itself is probably most well-known by tourists to Japan for its Ghibli Museum, a widely-mentioned essential top for fans of anime and the popular Studio Ghibli movies. Figure 1: Seiji Endo at Natural in January 2025 As for this jazz spot Natural, the venue’s name is inspired by the goal of delivering music naturally (described as a natural sound/acoustics environment in ナチュラルの音環境) through an interesting variety of events, musicians, and styles. ...

“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. ...

Taeko Kurita’s Ko-tsu-ko-tsu is a solo piano album from 2012 featuring eight of her original songs. In addition to being a member of other groups such as jazz trios, many of her earlier releases as a leader are showcases for her solo piano compositions and improvisation. In fact, one of her most recent albums is simply called SOLO 5, mentioned in the previous article on her piano-drums album DUO. Like that album, Ko-tsu-ko-tsu is another great pick from her past catalog. ...

Pianist Taeko Kurita and drummer Akira Sotoyama present us with Duo, a 2024 live album recorded in 2023 at “Shicho Shitsu” (Listening Room), an experimental music venue in Tokyo’s Jimbocho district. In true improvisational form, the duo met with minimal prearrangements in order to let the mood, music, room, and audience guide their performance. The concert becomes a selection of ten of pianist Kurita’s compositions, framed by the piano and decorated by the drums. ...

The band Melodies released their self-titled debut album in January 2025, under the leadership of guitarist and composer Motohiko Ichino. Ichino’s music is rooted in his otherworldly compositions and full-bodied guitar tone, a structure that Melodies expands upon with two entwining saxophones and adventurously roaming drums. This four-member group consists of Ichino on guitar and baritone guitar, Kenta Tsugami on alto saxophone, Minyen Hsieh on tenor saxophone, and Akira Sotoyama on drums. As this quartet has no bass player, they form a subtly floating, bass-less group sound. Yet Ichino’s guitar work fills up the space nicely, especially when he subs in baritone guitar. All of the songs on Melodies were written by Ichino, and the album was recorded at a live performance at Velvet Sun in Tokyo on June 24, 2024. ...

Niigata sake, oden, and modern jazz: Congratulations to In F (*) for celebrating 30 years open this year (est. July 17, 1995)! The name In F refers to the key of F of music. Playing a blues in F, or certain other standard tunes in F, is common in jazz. Figure 1: Toritoritori trio with Kana Fuefuki (flute, piano), Hitomi Aikawa (melodica, percussion), and Megumi Hattori (vibraphone, piano) at In F in March 2025. The name “toritoritori trio” could be interpreted as “bird bird bird trio”, nice wordplay where the rhyming punctuation of the English word ‘trio’ follows the three-times repeated Japanese word ‘tori’. It’s a great name for a band whose members frequently trade places on stage during a show and create soaring music flying between various instruments including flutes, lots of percussion, small keyboards, vibraphone, and piano. ...

I’m always excited to get my hands and ears on a new release from pianist Mayuko Katakura. Her latest trio disc, recorded with bassist Takumi Awaya and drummer Noritaka Tanaka, is titled The Duality of My Soul and was released earlier this year. It hits the spot as a sharply modern jazz piano trio album. The album’s eight tracks consist of seven Katakura originals and one cover song to close the set, an instrumental version of singer Abbey Lincoln’s “Being Me.” Karakura’s music is pure trio propulsion, muscular, raw, and risk-taking. Other emotions and impressions generated while listening to this music include the words heavy yet facile, determined and pointed. Whatever the subjective descriptions imply, it’s completely enjoyable, straight-ahead J Jazz coolness. ...

Circles is a 2021 album from the Kunpei Nakabayashi Orchestra, a ten-member big band led by the group’s namesake leader and bassist. The CD has eight songs and runs for about forty-seven minutes, while the streaming version of the album includes six of the songs. This is Nakabayashi’s third release and the first with his orchestra. It’s an exciting big band sound where the instrumental arrangements are a natural forefront highlight of Nakabayashi’s music written for alto sax, tenor sax, clarinet, flute (x2), baritone saxophone, trumpet (x2), trombone (x2), piano, bass, and drums. All of the players are well-known, hard-working musicians working in and outside Japan in various forms. Special mention is made for trumpeter Takuya Kuroda, the most famous name in this group who is known for major label releases, international jazz festival activity, and collaborations with international musicians in jazz, fusion, and other genres. ...

Longing is the title of a 2023 jazz duo album from saxophonist Yosuke Sato and pianist George Nakajima. This is an eight-song, forty-five-minute album of familiar jazz standards and two Japanese pop songs. Of the eight songs, the first six are played by the elegant hand-in-glove duo of saxophone and piano. To wrap up the album, the duo becomes a trio as vocalist Ema joins in for the last two songs, singing beautifully in English and Japanese. The album’s title Longing may lean into some unnamed persistent desire portrayed in their playing, the long ago brought to life through their selection of timeless songs. ...