The five songs maintain that mystery and beauty with light, neatly arrayed piano trio frameworks filled out with painted backgrounds via orchestration of the trumpet, saxes, and guitar on the two septet/sextet tracks.

The title track “Rougequeue” opens with a crystal edge and rich use of the seven instruments for color and texture. The piano trio takes over on track #2 “Ringlight”, a dramatically swinging waltz that was a semifinalist in Japan’s 2014 International Songwriting Competition.

Chiba plays solo piano on track #3 “Orange Sky”, playing the piano with melodic tension and timing as if pulling the strings of a marionette to create life and feelings from wood and strings. Here as with other of Chiba’s compositions, the balanced mixture of pop, jazz, classical, and Japanese folk charm invokes captivating images.

Track #4 “Backstroke” is a six-member piece with characteristically modern, progressive jazz elements like a Herbie Hancock/Wayne Shorter outfit. A foreboding pedal note and vamp motif underpin slow-moving arrows of melody, leading to exciting sax and piano solos and a funky interlude with a guitar solo.

Chiba returns to solo piano for #5 “Water Flower” (ending with a solo piano piece is a pleasing tradition with this pianist’s albums). This song, in medium tempo in 5/4 time, approaches the jazz/classical piano boundary with minor tones, low notes, and emotional heft. With its slowly expressive melody over busier left-hand terrain, the album closes in a melancholic mood and evokes empathetic resonance on the wings of Chiba’s inspiration.

Audio and Video

• Audio for “Rougequeue”, track #1 on this album:

• Live quartet version of “Backstroke” from 2014, track #4 on this album:

• Full playlist for this album

• Audio samples of #1 “Rougequeue” and #4 “Backstroke”

• Excerpt from track #2: “ringlight”

Colorful like sprinkles on donuts, the vibrancy extends from the cover design and illustrations (also by Ogawa) down through to her music. Her flute playing is jazzy, quick, and skillful, obviously the result of years of dedication and study of jazz and flute, but can also be petal-soft with a charming, tremulous vibrato that tugs the at heartstrings for an extra emotional charge.

While Ogawa is currently based in and performs in Japan, her educational path and the influences on her musical life up to now are wide-ranging. She started playing jazz in high school in Salt Springs Canada and continued with higher education at the University of Kansas, Boston’s Berklee School of Music, and the live scene in New York City. Her early experience resulted not only in important motivation and knowledge but also several awards, and eventually led to her debut Sky is the Limit: A Letter to Salt Springs (2016) and this 2019 album.

Where Have U Been? groups the young flutist together with thirteen musicians arranged into about eight different structures on the various tracks. Her core group is a jazz flute quartet with piano, electric bass, and drums, starting strong with #1 “Blue Smoke”, a stylishly cool beat with a smooth yet heavy pulse.

Continuing through the tracks, various members and instruments sub in and out for a dynamic feel as the album progresses. Some changes are subtle, others are more dramatic, like switching from electric bass to acoustic double bass and baby bass to adding violin, cello, percussion, guitar, trombone, and Fender Rhodes.

The two tracks with strings are cheerful and upbeat (violin and percussion on #3 “Maria Cervantes”) and heavenly lush with a beautiful arrangement (#4 “Completed Light”). Similar to #3, #6 “Sinceridage” is also a Latin rhythm taken at a comfortably cute pace and featuring guitar, and #8 “Is it going to be sunny?” is another fresh and sweet swing jazz break. #9 “Rain” revisits the Glasper-esque smooth and hummable groove with the classic Fender Rhodes keyboard sound enhancing the vibe.

Also quite noticeable and dramatic here is one of Ogawa’s specialties, spotlit on one track and perhaps leaving the listener wanting more. Her impressive solo “voice percussion flute” skills (ボイパフルート, boipa flute) are featured on the challenging and well-known jazz classic #5 “Isotope” by Joe Henderson. Here, the flutist beatboxes drum sounds with voice, lips, and breath as she simultaneously plays the tune’s melody through her flute.

Ogawa’s sunny personality rises from the music through to the design and musical titles, with motivational messages sprinkled through the layout (“Love yourself and do your best”, “Life is a party and you are invited!!”, “愛 (love)”, “so flute!”) and also felt in the song titles of Ogawa’s original compositions (“Blue Smoke”, “Road Trip”, “Completed Light”, “Sinceridage”, “Is it going to be sunny?”, “Rain”, “Winter Moon”) which have a tangibly natural and easy-going spirit.

Following the plethora of musician switches, the final track #10 “Winter Moon” finds the flute quartet returning for a simply lovely track of slow magic, essences of mystical and wistful hope that leaves a mark in the perfect place, a graceful exit from a sparkling and fun jazz flute album.

Obi Notes

The second album from ERiSA, a rising star in the jazz flute world and winner of the Grand Prize in the third Chigusa Awards!

Colorful pop-jazz that captures everything from her first debut up through now!

Audio and Video

• Promotional video with audio excerpts and scenes from the recording and photo shoot:

• Erisa Ogawa’s voice-percussion-flute style at Apollo Amateur Night Japan 2019:

• Erisa Ogawa’s video channel

• Erisa Ogawa’s website videos (older)

• Excerpt from track #7: “Punk”

Canvas features ten songs with a running length of 53 minutes, all original compositions from pianist Chiba. The music is modern and brilliant and seeks to avoid common structures and patterns. With a breathy lightness and touching nostalgia, the trio fills out the space with convergent and intersecting layers.

The first three tracks lead off by displaying curiosity and fun, rich, mellow music composed with maturity. “Prologue” contains various turns as an enticing invitation, leading to the mysterious thrill of “Breathless” and the exciting footrace of “Run, Run Melos”. From there, the struttingly catchy anthem of “Pechika Pachika” establishes one of the strongest lingering melodies on the album, and leads to more original music full of mystery and evolving structures.

Liner Notes

(Translated from the original Japanese liner notes written by Fumie Chiba.)

Introduction

In a world full of so many CDs, thank you for picking up this album.

This unusual trio of guitar, drums, and piano started with the aural image of three people on the same circumference and has been performing live for about three and a half years now.

As the number of songs written for this band kept increasing, I kept thinking that I wanted to record someday.

It would be our greatest pleasure if you could enjoy a journey of free imagination with us and the sonic world of FNK. (Fumie Chiba)

1.Prologue

I wanted to write a song to serve to introduce the band. When I came up with the motif for this song, putting aside whether or not this could serve as a band introduction, I felt as if this song with its fluid time and tonality could go anywhere. The actual recording started from this song, and we decided that the first take recorded at the original soundcheck was a good one. However, after recording all the songs, it was decided to take one song for promotional video use, and we performed this song again, recording this take. Since this was both the first and last song of our recording, there was a sense of it being both a prologue and an epilogue.

2.Breathless

This song is often played at the opening of FNK’s live performances. Recalling the Japanese form for “breathless”, the three of us are forming synchronization within one of this band’s themes, the sense of three people circling in the same orbit. Quietly, warmly, a scene of penetrating light arises.

3.Run, Run Melos

The frustration of never arriving at your destination no matter how much you run and run, but you keep taking another step. The guitar riff with an extended delay gives this impression. When I wrote this song, I adopted the title from a book I remember reading in elementary school. I get a feeling like I’m running with Melos every time we play this song.

4.Pechika Pachika

When this melody came to me, I didn’t know the time signature or chord progression, but for some reason, the title “Pechika Pachika” came to mind. There’s a floating kind of feeling every time we play the simple melody, a strange song that brings fresh surprises.

5.Way Back Home

The guitar’s gentle bottleneck tone creates a nostalgic feeling of being enveloped in the orange light of the evening. We try to play it with the feeling of moving slowly, slowly, at the end of the day.

6.Green Field

This song depicts a scene where a person stands alone atop a hill, surrounded by 360-degree wind. One of the characteristics of this band is songs that are not bound by usual jazz formats. For this take only, the drums were recorded a second time, overdubbing a new drum track over the original drums, creating a panoramic feeling of scattered notes being carried along by the wind.

7.Kansokyoku (Interlude)

This is a song written for this recording. It’s a short song that seems to add several layers, with the melody theme moving from piano to guitar, swaying and slightly changing little by little.

8.Aqua

The piano starts without a count-off, the drums come in, and then the guitar takes over the melody statement. Flowing notes gradually increase in energy with a guitar solo, then a piano solo, and ending in a dramatic drum finale.

9.Canvas

I was moved by the story of how John Lennon and Yoko Ono met. I wrote this song because I also wanted to become a canvas for the two musicians and listeners to draw on using notes from their imagination.

The first three minutes begin with piano improvisation followed by the main theme. Then guitar and drums sketch an improvised painting on the canvas of this melody.

10.Reminiscence

The reminiscence of a short and simple motif appears several times. From the album’s opening “Prologue” and the general tonal center of Am, and after visiting various other keys, “Reminiscence” finally ends this journey in C, the relative key of Am.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for “Prologue”, track #1 on this album:

• Live excerpt from “Breathless”, track #2 on this album:

• Live excerpts from “Breathless”, “Mi Fa Sol”, “Someday My Prince Will Come”, and “Restart” from 2020:

• Excerpt from track #3: “走れ、走れメロス (Run, run, Melos)”

The talented musicians play sensitively and at times sound like a Brad Mehldau-inspired modern jazz piano trio, creating a lush background for Suda’s masterful voice.

The album starts strongly with four catchy and elaborate originals penned by Suda and pianist Yuichi Narita, then moves into jazz and pop territory. Novel versions of “Waters of March”, “Doralice”, Chick Corea’s “Crystal Silence”, and the jazz standards “How About You” and “What a Wonderful World” fill out the middle of the tracklist. The album closes sweetly with two pop songs, Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” and Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today”, a pairing perfectly matched with the band’s modern, affectionate mood.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album:

• Excerpt from track #1: “Flowers On The Hill”