For this release, two prominent jazz players from Australia join Kuribayashi and Ichino, yet Kuribayashi is no stranger to international connections. In addition to her frequent concerts in Japan, she’s performed with many non-Japanese musicians for overseas tours and recording sessions, including this album’s guest trumpeter Niran Dasika, who has recorded several of his past albums with Kuribayashi.

Naturally, Kuribayashi’s sense of cross-boundary collaborations in jazz extends to this album as well. Although the musicians span continents, and the title grants images of far-away orbiting bodies resonating grandly, their music here is firmly grounded with a warm hum. It conveys introspection, as if to encourage and reward inward meditation. The atmospheric music, at-times dark and intimate, sets the right mood for pulling true emotions out of the musicians, not to mention the listeners. Even the cover art seems to invite an infinite inward/outward gaze, as four planes narrow to a point bounded by distant clouds where a solitary bird explores the limits.

This jazz trio consists of piano, guitar, and drums (and quartet with trumpet for three songs), so this is a somewhat unconventional jazz combo format in terms of classic combo setups.

The so-named bass-less trio format has no low notes produced by an upright bass player. While, technically, the piano range covers the same low notes as an upright bass, the effect is audibly different. The large double bass instrument is not just visually imposing, but naturally creates its own distinctive thumps, slides, hits, and pulls, and all manner of dynamics that a player’s direct fingers on the strings can pull off, in addition to the occasional bowing and the unique personality and style of the individual playing the instrument.

Some say bass-less trios can open up the sound of the group, in so far as the harmonies can be more ambiguous with a floating feeling in the absence of expansive low bass notes that lock the musical roots in and set the pulse of time. Having no bassist can also influence the rest of the group as they adjust their playing to compensate or experiment with different styles of playing in the sonic space.

On Orbital Resonance, the musicians may be more conscious of their roles and their unique tones playing without a bass net. They interact closely and there is a heightened effect of their unified texture of interlaced sounds. The piano’s tender delicacy and steady riffs, the warmly organic guitar tone, and the drums’ kaleidoscopic shimmering, combine to produce a sound that is mellow but alive. This vibrancy is increased when evocatively whispered trumpet is added, and when those whispers grow to more intense effusion.

An emotional hue colors the album, with colors ranging from ethereal and gentle (#1 “Deep Breath”), soothing as a balm (#2 “Family”), moodily exciting and dramatic (#4 “Tanabata Song”, #6 “Road”, #7 “Green Sprout”), and mournful (#3 “Bittersweet”). There are also bright and positive moments (#5 “Yell”, #8 “Onaji Fune ni Noru” (riding on the same boat)) where hope rises and swells to orbit above the clouds, promising better days ahead.

This late 2025 release and the followup tour dates for Sumire Kuribayashi’s Orbital Resonance also marked a special anniversary for the pianist, as it has been a full decade since her debut album Toys (2014) came out. This CD was released in September 2025, and an LP release of Orbital Resonance is planned to be released in May 2026. More information on this album can be found at Orbital Resonance album/streaming links and the Sumire Kuribayashi Online Shop.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for Orbital Resonance:

• “Tanabata Song” from Orbital Resonance:

• Interview with Sumire Kuribayashi on the RoseLove’s Love Power Podcast about Orbital Resonance, with album excerpts and discussion:

• Excerpt from track #5: “Yell”

The nine tracks on Decision are entirely original songs from both Yamamoto and Kuribayashi, who contribute four and five compositions respectively. The paired sound of piano and vibraphone meshes well through their balanced playing, as the fingers, hammers, and strings of Kuribayashi’ piano innately bonds with the mallets, bars, and pipes of Yamamoto’s vibraphone.

Kuribayashi lends her voice to some of the songs as well, for an angelic effect that is sometimes layered multiple times in a fantastic chorus. This creates an elevated level of joyful beauty and depth to the music.

Decision was originally released online as a six-track digital album in the summer 2020, and later that year, was re-released on CD with three additional tracks.

The album opens with the slow burner “Lull in the Rain”, where Yamamoto and Kuribayashi take their time to set the scene, guiding listeners patiently into their world. #2 “Nobody There” is mysterious and moody, and brings to mind some of the Spanish, classical, and pop touches created by the great piano-vibes duo of Chick Corea and Gary Burton.

Track #3 “Look for the Almond Blossoms” lays out a straightforward jazz waltz, modern and contemplative. #4 “Déjà-vu” releases the beautiful chimes and reverberations of the two instruments with a grounded bluesy feel building to soaring emotions, with Kuribayashi’s voice adding another instrumental texture. #5 “With the Sound of Rain” is a pretty jazz ballad, gentle and refreshing.

The title track #6 “Decision” is a multi-part suite whose sections introduce dreamy rubato canvases, Joel/Jarrett/Folds-style piano rock, a multi-layered vocal choir, and dramatic developments as heavy and austere as a cathedral, magically conjuring images of medieval middle-earth ceremonies in misty forest glades. #7 “Piano Songs No. 5” is a chapter from Yamamoto’s collection of inspired songs, a peaceful, calming waltz interlude graced by vocal clouds drifting slowly above.

#8 “Mattina” as written by Kuribayashi, played as a vibraphone solo by Yamamoto, and is as innocent and nostalgic as the memory of carousel ride from childhood. Finally, the album wraps up with #9 “Mean a Lot to Me”, where the duo works together empathically to develop the same steady and composed musical feeling together, expressed in this finale as a complex mix of a gradually developing farewell suffused with the lingering reluctance to part.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album:

• Sumireiko: Decision (six-song digital album version on Bandcamp)

• Excerpt from track #1: “Lull In The Rain”

The album brims with brilliant acoustic music full of clear harmonies and patiently developed melodies. The music reflects abstract themes represented by words in the song titles like movement (ways, roads), water (blue, dew, tides), and belonging and comfort (home, let me). The music is not abstract, however, but pinned down with the strength of conviction and personality that each player brings to the music. Each’s player’s identity does not dissolve in the trio but combines to create a new sound that is the sum of the parts. While there is, at first brush, a seemingly slow-moving surface that may describe meditative music as with a yoga playlist or a quiet church setting, there is an undertow of jazz, pop, blues, classical, free, and folk influences throughout. (It’s may be a high bar, but as a sound reference, think of concepts like Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert…). There is depth and nuance in the confident calm, in the ebb and flow. Quietness and patience allow for the trio’s delicate touches to be more noticable and emotionally powerful. It’s not overwhelming, not sparse, but comfortingly present, familiar, pervasive.

Liner Notes

(Translated from Akiomi Hirano’s original Japanese liner notes.)

A day spent surrendering ourselves to making music as a trio.

We are grateful to be able to share this one-day, once-only performance with you.

Kazuma Fujimoto

I wish for the music to accompany the subtle lyricism hidden in fleeting everyday moments and memories.

Takashi Sugawa

For example, a deep shining ultramarine, a glittering emerald green swaying in a gentle breeze, a violet or azure blue that changes expression with every glance. Waves of multiple sounds coexist and overlap and expand like tides before they return to being calm. I imagined such a scene while listening to the finished recording. With love and gratitude to the wonderful team who assisted with this project, and to everyone who is listening.

Sumire Kuribayashi

A divine combination

It can be described only as a divine combination.

It’s a happy moment particularly encountered in live jazz.
A phenomenon where a special sound emerges only by the combination of certain players, a matter of chemistry that can’t be predicted or planned in advance. Even when it does happen, it’s a delicate configuration where the magic could be lost if one member is absent or substituted with another musician.

Although the mechanism of creation may not be understood, it’s clear that it does not happen through top-down commands or orders. Rather, it’s the opposite of having too strong a direction. The basis is formed by equality and a mutually inspirational relationship between the members.

Strong personalities to inspire each performer, advanced skills to protect the music no matter what happens, creative ambition to expand individual musical potential… Perhaps only musicians who possess these three qualities meet the requirements for a divine combination.

However, assembling musicians who meet these requirements does not necessarily guarantee that the magic will happen. You won’t know unless you try, and the success rate is not very high. To put it plainly, it’s almost like winning the lottery, and not something that is created deliberately through intention.

I recently had the good fortune to witness this special unit, this divine combination. It was this drumless trio that I saw at Shibuya’s long-running jazz bar Body & Soul in June 2023.

I was very familiar with the three musicians, Sumire Kuribayashi, Kazuma Fujimoto, and Takashi Sugawa. But this was the first time I had seen them together. As it turned out, this wasn’t surprising, since this was their first gig together.

The music from these three musicians, filled with unique nuances, resembled nothing else I knew of. Without any hesitation, I proposed an offer to record them.

Following that, they played three gigs in preparation for the recording. With each one, they improved the precision of their sound and increased their level of sophistication even further.

Strong-willed yet elegant, natural yet meticulous. The result is that it’s beautiful without being cluttered.

These three know the virtues of acoustic music well, and their sound is gracefully shaped in an open space with lots of room for expression.

Their sound is worthy of special mention, as although it is tightly bound together for a cohesive sound as a mass feeling, each person’s individuality distinctly stands out as well. This unified yet multi-faceted aspect allows the sound of each to be heard clearly.

I wanted many jazz fans to be able to experience this irreplaceable sound. That was the wish that led me to produce this work.

Each of the three musicians works with their own bands made up of first-class musicians of different styles to expand the possibilities of expressing themselves.

Apart from her jazz influences, Sumire Kuribayashi was raised in a musically rich environment that included a koto master for a father, and she was blessed to hear a variety of music in her youth. While still young, she released her debut album in 2014, and after that she continued to release original records as a front-line pianist. What’s particularly noteworthy is that her traits and characteristics are unlike anyone else. Her individual style and underlying foundation are powerfully flexible yet unshakable.

Kazuma Fujimoto was also influenced by his father, who was a guitarist and singer-songwriter. He took up the guitar and formed the band Orange Pekoe in 1998. While gaining accolades for a unique sound that transforms diverse musical elements through his own interpretations, he is also active in the jazz scene and expanding his solo activities. Along with his radiant and beautiful personal tone, his lyrical and melodious original songs have also received high praise.

Takashi Sugawa has had close ties with Days of Delight starting with the recording of his band Banksia Trio. He is a renowned top bassist in the jazz world both in name and substance. He receives continuous requests to perform with musicians of all types, not only due to how he expands the band sound with his creative playing style, but also through the high-quality stimulation that his musical intelligence provides to his co-performers. To hear his sound is to immediately recognize it as his inherent texture.

The biggest effect of the sound that these three create is that it is not a simple sum or mathematical average, but an amalgamation of the whole into one body of mass. Figuratively speaking, it is more like a derived compound rather than building blocks.

However, this does not mean that their personalities are buried within the whole. As mentioned before, their individual identities are firmly noticeable. That is the crucial point.

While the three maintain their strong individuality (that is, each keeping their musical presence), they create a new overall picture. That is exactly the grounds for the truly divine combination that is a unique virtue of this band.

At the rehearsal before the recording, what impressed me was how everyone was refining their sound while sharing ideas without compromising themselves to match the others. Their thoughts were along the lines of “What should we do to make the group sound good,” and the approach of “Let’s constrain ourselves to avoid making waves” was not entertained.

The music recorded here by these three is the result of a conscious choice to preserve their individual personalities. It may be a paradox, but their organic connection is realized as the three reject musical interdependence and reliance and avoid easy harmony.

Why does this combination produce a special effect? Naturally, they have no awareness of it, so it cannot be explained.

It’s interesting that, despite the musicians being old friends who hold mutual respect for one another, for some reason, they didn’t have the opportunity to play together until now.

Each knows the other’s virtues and respects their musicianship. They had experiences as pairs [duos] but had none as a trio. These were the circumstances when I saw them on their first gig. This was the situation that sparked my sudden decision to record them.

When a jazz insider is gathering musicians for a live event or recording, there are two basic approaches. Should you channel the power of the musicians to express your desired musical vision? Or, conversely, should you leave everything up to the musicians and see what happens?

“But, this time it was a little different, you know.” This is how Sumire Kuribayashi described it, as she was the one who first considered this combination of players. For example, the songwriting process was different from usual.

“When I am songwriting, I always concentrate on bringing the music out of myself. Before thinking about the instrumentation or which musicians to partner with, I write to express myself purely. But this time, I was thinking of these two musicians from the start. Listening intently to their music, I had reactions like “Oh, this phrase is so pretty!” and “I like this intro!”, and I began to write songs filled with these ideas.

It’s not about shaping the music to one’s own vision, or about simply enjoying a carefree jam session. In other words, it is a third path. What can be discerned behind her words is the joy of making music as a trio and her respect for the other two members.

What types of musical perspective and musicianship do they have in common?

Kazuma Fujimoto’s words hint at this.

“My ideal is that the music lets you hear the heartbeat, that is, a heart-connected highly pure performance… to put out my inner self directly without any filters. In fact, I can sense this same characteristic in the other two musicians.”

He continues: Moment by moment, I want to express the scene and the images that arise without processing them. I also feel this with the other two. Perhaps it sounds good because they share the same feeling of what is important to extract from the music.

Consideration is a factor, but constraint is not. Respect, not submission. Inspiration, not control.

It must be this integrated position that the three share that is the basis of their unified yet multi-faceted music.

It’s not something that everyone can do, of course. At a minimum, preserving this attitude requires sustaining an appropriate distance from others while maintaining control of yourself, regardless of how much the situation changes. It’s easy to say, but difficult to accomplish.

This group constantly maintains the right distance from each other without breaking, so they can maintain a comfortable state no matter where they go. Therefore, there is no need to sacrifice themselves and yield to another in order to adapt to them.

Thinking about it, all three are gifted with exceptional hearing and can assess the situation quickly. Their reaction times are fast, and their physical abilities are excellent. They are always seeing everything from above. These are the same qualities that top athletes possess.

It may be that only athletes can create a new overall picture imbued with their strong individuality. When I see the trio of Sumire Kuribayashi, Kazuma Fujimoto, and Takashi Sugawa, I truly think so.

平野暁臣 Akiomi Hirano
(Days of Delight)
Founder/Producer

Obi Notes

Sumire Kuribayashi / Kazuma Fujimoto / Takashi Sugawa Tides of Blue
A gathering of three musicians who know the virtues of acoustic music well!
An unparalleled chemistry created by leading personalities in the Japanese jazz world!

“Strong-willed yet elegant, natural yet meticulous. The result is that it’s beautiful without being cluttered. These three know the virtues of acoustic music well, and their sound is gracefully shaped in an open space with lots of room for expression.” — Akiomi Hirano (from the liner notes)

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album:

• Sumire Kuribayashi and Kazuma Fujimoto playing “Road”:

• Bassist Takashi Sugawa’s Banksia Trio:

• Excerpt from track #2: “The Ways To Come Back Home Again”

With Toys, Kuribayashi plays nine tracks on the forty-eight-minute album, with five of her own songs and four beloved covers arranged together in a lively display of her musical vision. Whatever Toys may mean as a concept title (hinted at in the Obi Notes), it’s a playful album that works as a perfect medium for her musical worldview.

Some of the most melodically striking and immediately felt songs on the album are Kuribayashi’s own originals. Of these five songs, “Forest and an Elf” is fluid and magical, “Grand Line” is busy yet delicate, “Flying Toys” is sparkling and exciting, “W.M.P.” is bluesily modal and modern, and “Somethin’ Warm” is patient, pretty, and sincere. The medium tempo and straight-eights time feel color the songs with modern finesse and understated power. What’s clear in each is that Kuribayashi thinks through her compositions, not only the mechanics of structure and form, but how she wants them to imaginatively feel, how the players should think about them, and where she wants them to go.

Her selection of the four cover songs also demonstrates her consideration for balance and respect. She brings together songs from distinct planes of influence, from the worldwide megapop stars U2, to the sweet lyricism of Bill Evans, to the current-day Japanese vibraphonist and musical peer Reiko Yamamoto, to a deep cut from the much-loved bop pianist Sonny Clark.

“I Still Don’t Know What I’m Looking For” is down-home groovy, “Letter to Evan” is comfortably plush, “That Blue Bird” is tender and engrossing, and “Minor Meeting”, as the last cut on the album, hooks listeners and leaves them ready to hear more from Sumire Kuribayashi’s toy trove.

Liner Notes

(Translated from an excerpt of jazz writer Fumiaki Fujimoto’s section of the original Japanese liner notes.)

This debut CD is a perfect package for this lady’s charm. What surprised me during my first listen was how this whole album was overflowing with songs. The variety of the included songs is richly diverse, but each song is decorated with catchy and colorful melodies that are exclusively Sumire Kuribayashi’s own.

Particularly wonderful are the five original compositions. The dusky lyricism delicately woven in “Forest and an Elf”. The splendid, thrilling trio sound racing through “Grand Line”. The instinctive lifting of spirits by the invigorating “Flying Toys”. The geometrical theme on “W.M.P.”, allowing glimpses of another side of the composer. The simple and nostalgic theme that evokes quiet emotion on “Somethin’ Warm”… These songs and performances can really be seen as a crystallization of her current inner voice. The other songs are similarly good. U2, Bill Evans, Reiko Yamamoto, Sonny Clark… Her performances of their songs as covers convey her boundless love and respect for these composers, and are filled with her determination to take up challenges.

Perhaps crossed-arm critics will bemoan a lack of mind-blowing originality or astonishing technique on display. But I think that Sumire Kuribayashi’s vividly projected light certainly shines toward the future of jazz.

(The following is translated from Sumire Kuribayashi’s section of the original Japanese liner notes.)

01. Forest and an Elf (Sumire Kuribayashi)

This is a song created with a lot of inspiration drawn from pianist Aaron Parks. I was really moved when I went to his solo piano concert, where his music seemed to be resonating deep in a forest. Even when he walks down the street, he seems to be lightly floating like a woodland spirit.

This song has a lot of sections, and I made an effort to have the parts flow together seamlessly so as not to feel like a patchwork. I was having difficulty explaining this to the rest of the band, but finally, by singing what I meant, I was able to get it down.

02. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (U2)

We decided to record this by thinking “We should try to do a rock cover.” We considered Coldplay, Oasis, Radiohead, and others, but this song by U2 was the best fit for me. Just around that time, I was listening to a lot of Keith Jarrett from the Impulse years, and I tried to arrange it with a little bit of that folksy feel.

03. Grand Line (Sumire Kuribayashi)

Several years ago I went to see a live performance of Taylor Eigsti, Reuben Rogers, and Eric Harland. Eric’s drumming was so cool at that event, and I was so excited that after going home I wrote out this song in a day.

Actually, I love video games, and I’ve been hoping that someday I could write a majestic song that could appear in that medium. I wonder if this is the sort of song where I’ve created something like that. As I explained the imagery to the band members, they laughed and responded with “This part feels like an airplane speeding off into the wide open sky!” and “This here feels like wandering lost in a cave, then finding some light and escaping!”

*04. Letter to Evan (Bill Evans)*/ (no notes added)/

05. That Blue Bird (Reiko Yamamoto)

This song was written by Reiko Yamamoto and also recorded by our group “sumireiko”. The beautiful and heartfelt melody is just so great. Someone said to me “I’d love to hear this as a piano trio version!”, so I decided to include it this time.

The key is a difficult one, so it was quite a challenge. Also, I was trying to control my touch carefully so that the piano wouldn’t ring out too much. My arms got sore (haha). Perfecting the overall sound of the trio was a hard-won fight with a lot of trial and error, but I think that the struggle made for a nice result with a good feel.

06. Flying Toys (Sumire Kuribayashi)

I still needed one more song for the album and was fretting over it, so I went to my usual bar to change my mood. The owner encouraged me with such strong energy that I was able to write this song in one go. First of all, I wanted to use the name of the place as the song title (haha).

I aimed for a song and performance with a catchy melody sprinting above simple harmonies, sort of like a Pat Metheny idea. The drum solo in the second half is something I begged Takehiro Shimizu for, asking him, please just beat it down! I think it’s really cool.

*07. W.M.P. (Sumire Kuribayashi) */(no notes added)/

08. Somethin’ Warm (Sumire Kuribayashi)

This is a ballad I wrote for all those who have supported me up to now and who have listened to this CD. It expresses my appreciation for you all. It’s a simple melody that I play directly and as written, without improvisation. Shinichi Kato takes over the melody on bass partway through, and it’s amazing how his warm and kind personality also really comes through.

09. Minor Meeting (Sonny Clark)

During college, I studied bebop and nothing else. At first, I didn’t quite get it, but now I’ve fallen in love with it. I picked this tune to pay tribute to those beboppers. The thumping, weighty intro is also in my style of sincere respect for what’s sometimes referred to by some as “Black Jazz”. I was feeling a little Oscar Peterson in the middle with the second riff played in unison.

Obi Notes

Playing with the piano, toying with the notes, living in jazz.

Sumire Kuribayashi Trio’s Toys

From the fresh, twenty-first century label “Somethin’ Cool” comes the popular pianist’s genuine debut album, already making waves online with the original song “Forest and an Elf”, and a cover of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”!

Performers: Sumire Kuribayashi (piano), Shinichi Kato (bass), Takehiro Shimizu (drums)

Audio and Video

• Video excerpt from #1 “Forest and an Elf”:

• Live performance of #1 “Forest and an Elf”:

• Video excerpt from #6 “Flying Toys”:

• Live performance of #5 “That Blue Bird”:

• Video excerpt from #2 “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”:

• Audio for #9 “Minor Meeting”:

• Label page with audio samples

• Excerpt from track #3: “グランド・ライン (Grand Line)”

Written in Japanese, Reiko Yamamoto’s name is 山本玲子. Reiko (玲子) contains the kanji character 玲 which represents the sound of jewels and is used in several aural words invoking tinkling and chiming sounds. Whether or not that character had a direct influence on the musician’s life, it’s an appropriately fitting context for her masterful playing of this brilliantly translucent instrument.

All of the songs are by the group leader Yamamoto, whose musical ideas are let loose on the nine tracks’ creative arrangements and solos. The music is typically modern sounding with mostly straight-eight rhythms adorned with interesting meters, melodic placements, and musical structures.

Joining Yamamoto is her “Square Pyramid” quartet (distinguished from her previous two “Tempus Fugit” swing/bop quartet albums) featuring Sumire Kuribayashi on piano, Keisuke Furuki on bass, and Hiro Kimura on drums.

The flow of the album is like a three-act storytelling arc, with thrilling action in acts one and three and calm respites in the middle. The opening is all excitement delivered through the propulsion of heart-racing notes on #1 “Vibrant Line” and #2 “Midnight Blue”.

Next, the mellow #3 “Staring at the Rain” and the melancholic #4 “Missing Piece” are both pretty creations placed to introduce different moods and moments of peaceful reflection.

Nestled in the middle of the album is a set of three conceptually linked tracks: #5 “Piano Songs No. 2”, #6 “Piano Songs No. 3”, and #7 “Short Stories No. 5”.

These three songs examine more sides of the tinkling gem (or faces of the pyramid) and showcase compositional traces of classical, progressive, folk, rock, and mystery, with a lyrical touch resembling a poetic, possibly Jethro Tull-ish, personality.

Incidentally, more numbers from the Piano Songs and Short Stories series appear on Yamamoto’s other musical projects and albums including Sumireiko, Yamako, Jazz Resort, and Magnolia (coming up in future articles here).

The last two tracks, #8 “Black Forest” and #9 “That Blue Bird” seem to blend into each other and share some musical traits, (not to mention the background that these two tracks share, explained in the liner notes), confidently bringing the album to a close for a theatrical conclusion.

Liner Notes

(Translated from Reiko Yamamoto’s original Japanese liner notes.)

1. Vibrant Line

This is a song originally written for a vibraphone ensemble. The word vibrant has the same etymological root as vibrate, which is also the origin of the name of the instrument vibraphone. In addition to the meanings of vibrating and trembling, it also includes the meanings of being active and energetic. I chose this title hoping to make you feel the music’s dynamics from the percussive approach and the reverberation of the vibraphone.

2. Midnight Blue

It’s characteristic for instrumentalists to frequently travel by car, especially on the roads at night. This song portrays going down the Metropolitan Expressway in the dead of night… Imagine driving with the feeling of sprinting. In actuality, the color of my current car is called midnight blue, which is where I got the name of this song.

3. Staring At The Rain

This song’s title “Staring at the Rain” depicts a house in Europe with a woman inside, sitting by the window, resting her chin on her hands, and looking out at the gloomy rain outside. I wrote this song while imagining that scene. It was a rainy day when I wrote this song, and I didn’t want to go outside, but if I didn’t go out I wouldn’t get things done… I was wavering. In that mood, I gazed at the rain and imagined what this European woman would be feeling while staring at the rain.

4. Missing Piece

For a jigsaw puzzle with even just one piece missing, it cannot be said to be completed. I gave this song this title to express the instability of those times when something is lost, as with this melody that seems to be headed to a resolution somewhere but ends up being unsettled.

5. Piano Songs No. 2

Subtitled “/Kiseki” (trajectory, the path one has taken/). In 2017 I went to see Gary Burton’s last concert before his retirement, playing in a duo with pianist Makoto Ozone. Ozone’s piano at that time was extremely lovely, but also very heartbreaking… I wished at the time that it could never end. This is a song of a pianist who follows closely their mentor’s life trajectory.

6. Piano Songs No. 3

I usually compose with the sound of the piano, so sometimes the resulting songs will be closer to the image of a piano playing style rather than melodies played on a vibraphone. The Piano Songs series is a collection of such songs. Around the time I wrote No. 3, I was listening to a lot of European pianists like Enrico Pieranunzi and Michel Petrucciani, so this song was influenced by that period.

7. Short Stories No. 5

This is a song I wrote while playing Short Stories on vibraphone. Short Stories is a collection of short pieces for solo vibraphone. This “No. 5” is based on something I improvised somehow or other while playing at home one day. I hope you can closely hear the vibraphone’s characteristic approach of having such a resonant sound combined with its limited pitch range and number of chord voices that can be played simultaneously.

8. Black Forest

After listening to the next song “That Blue Bird”, an artist imagined the moment that song was born and created a painting for me entitled “Black Forest”. The painting shows a pitch-black forest with a large reflecting lake, glowing beautifully with moonlight and glittering with the surfacing of fragments of musical phrases. From this, I set that title to music, which resulted in this song’s creation.

9. That Blue Bird

The story “Blue Bird” describes how Tyltyl and Mytyl travel on a long journey searching for a blue bird and concludes with them finding that blue bird, which then flies away and ends the story. We may realize that happiness is always close to us but, just like the blue bird that flies away, can also disappear in a flash. Although I named this song after a story with quite a philosophical significance, this “Blue Bird”, at least for me, has brought a lot of happiness.

Obi Notes

A new page in the history of jazz vibraphone sound.

The long-awaited all-originals release from the new band debut.

Reiko Yamamoto has released two albums with “Reiko Yamamoto Tempus Fugit” (Terasima Records), participated in genre-crossing collaborations, and has become known for the endless possibilities of her vibraphone sound. She now releases a full album of her original compositions fully unleashing her well-established compositional and arrangement techniques. Throughout jazz history from swing to hard bop, fusion, and contemporary genres, the vibraphone has produced many songs and has been incorporated into many bands as a novel instrument. Here again, a new part of this history will be recorded.

Audio and Video

• Live performance of “That Blue Bird”, track #9 on this album:

• Live performance of “Piano Songs No. 2”, track #5 on this album:

• Excerpt from track #1: “Vibrant Line”

Using a palette of jazz standards, new compositions, and free improvisation, the duo creates a tranquil mood with songs brimming with warmth. The richly-recorded sounds of piano and bass float in and around the melodies with unhurried timing and free improvisation with vocal-like qualities. Unloosing the emotional core may be the goal as the two musicians work together to create beautiful experiences, a canvas of lullabies and spiritual-like visions.

From the opening Ornette Coleman number “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”, the drama unfolds slowly as the duo moves soothingly through the songs. Familiar jazz standards such as “Londonderry Ayre (Danny Boy)”, “I’ll Be Seeing You”, and “All The Things You Are” are balanced with deeper covers like Charlie Haden’s “Our Spanish Love Song” and Bill Evans’ “Children’s Play Song”. Four original compositions are included, ballads and sound-spaces drifting like meandering streams, enjoying the moment with a fulfilling patience rather than rushing to a destination.

Audio and Video

• Hideaki Kanazawa and Sumire Kuribayashi performing live in 2018:

• Excerpt from track #1: “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”