The 45-minute album contains all original compositions from the pianist, eight new songs in her consistently original but true-to-jazz-roots style that incorporates different rhythms, influences, and cultures. The trio members — Harumi Nomoto on acoustic piano, Ryoji Orihara on fretless electric bass, and Sohnozuke Imaizumi on drums — are the same as 2014’s Virgo, and they gel perfectly as a fun, intuitive, and locked-in trio playing a variety of Nomoto’s compositions and great picks from the standard jazz canon.

The album starts with track #1 “Double Touch” with an immediate shift into Nomoto’s style of creative, straight-ahead piano trio jazz. Unexpected accents written into the melody pique curiosity with a feeling of near-imbalance that is rooted in the solid ground of unshakable groove. This sets the mood for a special loose-but-tight feeling in the music, one that displays the skill and excellence the musicians bring together through puzzle-piece coordination and trust.

#2 “Seiran” could be heard as a dichotomy of J-Jazz, where the intro and outro sections serve up a smooth club jazz/hip hop posture surrounding an inner core of medium-tempo good ol’ jazz blues.

#3 “Sudoku” is a song built on a musical challenge as Nomoto arranges twelve notes and twelve chords of the chromatic scale into a hopscotch framework of music. (This puzzle formulation is reminiscent in jazz of Bill Evans’ “T.T.T. (Twelve Tone Tune)” and, in Japanese jazz, Hitomi Nishiyama’s “T.C.T. (Twelve Chord Tune)”.) With Orihara and Imaizumi covering the foundation, Nomoto’s adlibs through most of the song with a wildly unconstrained yet carefully controlled solo. As with many of the moments on this album, the trio walks a tightrope of concentration and relaxation, where only their familiarity, intuition, and skills keep them aloft in the air as they improvise spontaneously.

Track #4 “Cucumber Man” is a happy groove jam in the direction of Herbie Hancock hard bop and New Orleans-style funk, filled with the brightness of three jazz musicians settling in for some fun.

#5 “Guitar no Yo Ni” is another smooth offering that brings laid-back comfort with a rock/hip-hop beat to the fore, similar to the intro and outro of #2 “Seiran”. Some sounds from Nomoto’s earlier releases and also in this style, particularly Belinda (2007) with its emotionally stirring loops of chords-to-chord wrinkles on certain progressions with deep groove drum beats.

Track #6 is the title track “Anitya”, a forward-learning modern jazz song that grabs the attention with its sharp writing and performance.

The last two tracks, #7 “Warm Winter” and #8 “Jacques”, work nicely together as a pair of songs to wrap things up, guiding the listener out gently and lovingly. As the album starts to close, the sounds are slower and more tranquil, as if luring us into a deeper state of peace, an extended goodbye. “Warm Winter” sets a lovely and sweet mood as Nomoto plays expressively throughout the song. The closing track “Jacques” dives even further for a darker feeling of intensity with peace, an immense tidal blue expanse that surrounds and supports everything.

Liner Notes

(Translated from Harumi Nomoto’s original Japanese liner notes.)

1.Double Touch

This is a blues-form song with accents set in certain places to shift the timing. The title comes from a soccer term related to footwork.

2.Seiran (青藍, indigo blue)

This song is an 8-bar blues progression. I love the color of indigo blue that is called seiran in Japanese.

3.Sudoku

I created a song that uses 12 notes for the melody and 12 chords. There was a time when I was hooked on sudoku (“number place”). The way the performance starts like a puzzle and gradually turns chaotic resembles the way that I feel when I am solving a sudoku.

4.Cucumber Man

There’s an anecdote about a person who was told “In a past life, you were a cucumber”. For some reason, I remembered this at a time when I wrote a cheerful-sounding tune. It’s a play on “Watermelon Man” by Herbie Hancock.

6.Guitar no Yo Ni (ギターのように)

I originally started writing this thinking about the soft strumming of a guitar. As I continued to work it, it became something completely different… but that’s alright, too.

6.Anitya

I wrote this song thinking of a Spanish 3-beat song that I happened to hear. Once again, the result turned out to be something completely different. Anitya is a Sankrit word that expresses the meaning of impermanence. Although it’s is unrelated to the song itself, I come to think more about these things as I grow older, so I chose this title.

7.Warm Winter

If I recall correctly, around the time the coronavirus had started spreading, there was a warm winter without any snowfall. This is a melody that came to me at the time, when I was feeling uneasy for some reason or another.

8.Jacques

I created this song while imagining waves coming in and going out. I borrowed the name from the legendary diver Jacques Mayol, who loved the sea around Tateyama in his later years.

Audio and Video

• “Cucumber Man” (track #4) — live at Bon Courage, Tokyo, in February 2025:

• “Guitar no Yo Ni” (track #5) — live at Pit Inn, Tokyo, in June 2024:

• “Warm Winter” (track #7) — live at Pit Inn, Tokyo:

• Harumi Nomoto Trio: Anitya promotional video with short excerpt from “Aniyta” (track #6):

• Harumi Nomoto Trio: Anitya promotional video with short excerpt from “Cucumber Man” (track #4)

• Full album (YouTube)

• Full album (Spotify)

• Full album (Apple)

• Excerpt from track #1: “Double touch”

In contrast to her signature Harumi Nomoto sound, this holiday release offers shorter, simpler, and sincerely played versions of traditional Christmas carols, hymns, pop Christmas tunes, classical whimsy, and modern pieces. Whereas her trio albums have been filled with Nomoto’s original material, only one of her original pieces appears here, tying up the album as a set closer like a ribbon on a wrapped present.

Nomoto’s piano performance fills the album with her sensitive solo playing. On a few songs, she overlays her acoustic piano with a synth: an Nord electric keyboard layers a soft choir-like organ on track #1 “O Little Town of Bethlehem” for a holy effect, and #4 “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker has synth organ bells taking center stage for a sweetly dark atmosphere. Patient, precise, yet flexible and full of feeling, it’s all as warm and comfortable as a tranquil holiday fireplace setting.

In addition to traditional carols and Christmas classics, Nomoto also plays a few pop- and jazz-aligned tunes. John Lennon’s #9 “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” is always popular in Japan at this time of year and gets a friendly, gospel-y solo piano treatment. Similarly, #6 “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” is another iconic and nostalgic instrumental theme in Japan, originating from the 1983 Japanese film and soundtrack of the same name, and it is often featured in Christmas playlists despite its not being written specifically as a holiday song. #2 “Blue Christmas” is a groovy rock-and-roll country song that Elvis sung and made more popular. Perhaps the song here with the deepest jazz credentials is track #8, “A Merrier Christmas”, a rare, unrecorded holiday piece written by Thelonious Monk for his family.

Cheery and cozy, the spirit of jazz piano comes through each song on this album. The relatively short takes make it a quick one, too, and even those who may normally avoid jazzy Christmas albums will sense that, while I’ll Be Home For Christmas promises that tender reunion, it humbly does not overstay its welcome. Finally, the last song, Nomoto’s original composition “Snow Melts”, is a bittersweet parting, and its introspective mood recalls the promised closeness at the end of the year, charming as a hug, and something to look forward to again, someday.

Audio and Video

• “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” (track #6) — live version:

• “White Christmas” — live version:

• Excerpt from track #1: “O little town of Bethlehem”

On her later albums Belinda (2007) and Virgo (2014) and at various live shows, Harumi displays talent and affinity for imaginative original compositions not necessarily bound to the standard jazz trademarks. Yet on this first album, Nomoto earns fundamental jazz credit with well-known and swinging jazz standards like “My Shining Hour, “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was”, and “Stardust”.

In addition to these three jazz covers, three originals by Nomoto and two originals by jazz saxophonist Atsushi Ikeda are included. Nomoto’s songs (“Libra Sun”, “Blues on Saturday”, and “Go-Ma”) display early signs of her tendency for addictive grooves and relaxed rhythms, previewing her distinctive talent for imaginative compositions and fresh style.

Audio and Video

• Audio for “Stardust”, track #8 on the album:

• Excerpt from track #1: “マイ・シャイニング・アワー (My Shining Hour)”

As the moods flow, pianist Harumi Nomoto alternates on acoustic piano and the warm tones of Fender Rhodes electric piano, enhancing the songs with jazz grooves fusing elements of jazz, light funk, swing, blue ballads, and gospel. While favorites like “‘7up”, “Crescent”, and the cozy gospel waltz “My Sweet Brown” deliver chic and polished jazz arrangements, the songs are also interspersed with short jams “M.M.C.M.” in two versions, and closes in unrestrained style on two tracks, with Nomoto first roaming freely on solo piano, followed by the trio free-associating and capturing the moment in symbiotic creativity.

Audio and Video

• Harumi Nomoto solo piano improvisation for this recording:

• Harumi Nomoto Trio improvisation for this recording:

• Harumi Nomoto Trio performing “7up” live in 2010:

• Harumi Nomoto Trio performing “My Sweet Brown” live in 2012:

• Excerpt from track #2: “7up”

Virgo follows the pianist’s previous albums Another Ordinary Day (2002) and Belinda (2007) and completes a trio of records that progressively show an expansion of creative vision and songwriting tact. Through arrangements honed at Japanese jazz clubs through prior years, the music was released to eager fans with this album of seven originals plus an arrangement of Thelonious Monk’s “Green Chimneys”, which gets a unique slow-and-low groove treatment here.

Aside from straight-ahead jazz, leader Harumi Nomoto and bandmates fretless electric bassist Ryoji Orihara and multi-genre jazz drummer Sohnosuke Imaizumi have perfected a jazzy, funky groove for modern jazz, apparent throughout on tracks such as “Green Chimneys”, the effervescently modern and angular “Hirari”, and the entrancingly catchy “Avocado” which kicks into a flashy high-gear for an impressive trio showpiece.

Exotic musical elements also surface on Virgo, as African music inspires the strong crowd-pleaser “Do Re Mi”, a joyfully bouncy tune with an upbeat bass and drum groove with fun breaks. Similarly, an adventurous mood arises on “Azurq”, mellow and modal, and evoking foreign vibrations in the vein of Yusef Lateef’s Eastern explorations.

Plenty of peaceful space is also offered and balances the energy well, with the tender ballad “Aru Hito No Koto” and two versions of the song “Rain”, an ode to the beauty of wet weather and contemplative moods.

Audio and Video

• Album promo video #1:

• Album promo video #2:

• Album promo video #3:

• Album promo video #4:

• Excerpt from track #6: “Do re mi”