The sound of Chichibu’s music fascinates with creative arrangements of harmonized horn lines, suspenseful rhythms, and multi-part musical sections. As the liner notes indicate, her songs shine with personality inspired by concepts and ideas that move her.

Three of the most striking songs feature Chichi’s large ensemble, a nine-member group with horn players plus guitar, piano, bass, and drums. This complex music develops through breakneck joyrides experienced as tales brimming with flourishes.

These nonets play on the thrilling and propulsive #1 “Crossing Reality”, the complex and dramatic #2 “The Sea - Seven Years Voyage -” (tinged with Chick Corea-ish fusion), and the deep and exploratory #5 “The Preconscious”.

The smaller combos show more of the poppy and splashy pianist side of Chichibu. Her trio of piano, bass, and drums plays on #3 “Kaeru”, some of the most playful music on the album, with fun vamps covered with catchy melodies with sprinkles of surprising notes and polymeters. On #7 “green and winds”, she pares the group down even further for similarly breezy sounds with an upbeat gallop.

In addition to nonet, duo, and trio formations, there are also songs for quintet and octet. #4 “Blackberry Winter” with a quintet is a soundtrack-like reflective piece with a beautiful flugelhorn sound, and #6 “dreams of the wind” features an octet for adventurous mystery infused with mild ambient textures.

The final track on the album, #8 “THE VENDING MACHINE - with DRINK music” is driven by a jamming septet delivering the poppiest hooks and beats on the album, perfectly matching its use as the theme music and video used by a vending machine company in her home region of Tohoku.

Liner Notes

(Translated from Eri Chichibu’s original Japanese liner notes.)

Hello. Thank you for getting my debut album Eri Chichibu’s Crossing Reality. Together with guests from New York (Remy Le Boeuf, Milena Casado), and the energetic Japanese musicians, engineer, and team, we poured our energies into making this album. I included a variety of arrangements of songs from the heart, for trios and large ensembles. I needed to put all of this on this one album.

The inspiration for several of the included songs comes from nature, psychology, and experiences. Upon a base of the acoustic sound, I tried to paint a little with an approach to sound design that is uniquely possible on recordings. I hope you enjoy traveling between universes of reality and fantasy while letting your imagination run wild.

With gratitude.

1.Crossing Reality

Was I awake or was I sleeping… It’s a song I wrote between the evening and the morning. Reality and fantasy, facts and dreams, memories and experience, chaos and release… It’s a scene where things that seem like opposites swirl around in the mind and become reality within each individual… you know?

2.The Sea - Seven Years Voyage -

In 2011, I experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake. It was horribly shocking. After that, I reached a turning point and my life changed 180 degrees to start a career in music. From this experience, I began to feel strongly that one never knows what will happen in life, and in 2018 I decided to write a song about life’s voyage. Since writing this song I’ve continued to have many encounters and experiences. I wonder what else the future holds…

3.Kaeru 2022

In the middle of a forest, there is a small pond with frogs, squirrels, and little creatures hopping around it playfully. Birds are flying, flowers are blooming, and leaves are swaying… I picture that sort of peaceful waterside setting.

4.Blackberry Winter (feat. Milena Casado)

Days of warm weather, then suddenly it’s cold, then it becomes warm again… This is a song I wrote while breathing in the air of nature and the city, as the season changed from winter to spring in Boston.

5.The Preconscious

Based on Freud’s psychoanalysis, the constructions of human consciousness can be described as an iceberg floating in the ocean. Within the large iceberg, the conscious mind resembles land above the water, while the vast subconscious is hidden beneath it. Between them just around the surface level seems to be the range of the preconscious, which normally doesn’t rise to consciousness but can be brought to memory and become conscious with or without some effort. Hmm… Suddenly remembering something lightly floating on the ocean’s surface, strong emotions may somehow well up from the subconscious… Perhaps?

6.dreams of the wind (feat. Remy Le Boeuf)

There was a day in Boston when the sky was tinted with orange, pink, and purple, and a light wind was blowing. Does the wind also admire the beauty of the sky? Does the wind dream? Was the wind going to meet someone? What if I were the wind? What if you were?

7.green and winds

I was going down the roads of my hometown in Tohoku. As always, it was a serene setting that spread out before me with green and winds. I just felt like going out and having fun.

8.THE VENDING MACHINE - with DRINK music

Japanese vending machines… cold drinks, hot drinks, put a coin in and it immediately comes out… it’s so great! (And it’s fun to press a button and have a can come falling down.) Today as well, I want to take a breath, take a break, and spend a great day.

(Music for Sun Vending Tohoku commercial)

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album:

• Audio of #1 “Crossing Reality”:

• Video of #1 “Crossing Reality” (non-album version):

• Live video of #2 “The Sea - Seven Years Voyage -” (non-album version):

• Live video of #3 “Kaeru” (non-album version):

• Live video of #6 “dreams of the wind” (non-album version):

• Sun Vending Tohoku music video for #8 “with DRINK music”:

• Excerpt from track #2: “The Sea -Seven Years Voyage-”

From song to song, the combination of musicians and styles changes, shuffling between quartets, trios, and duos. Throughout, relaxed easiness and vintage swing arise from classy ensemble playing and spotlit guitar improvisation. As for the changing combos, a guitar quartet is featured on track #1 (guitar, piano, bass, drums), then a trio on #2 (guitar, bass, drums), a guitar & guitar duo, a quartet, a trio, a guitar & piano duo, a quartet (guitar, alto sax, trombone, bass), a sextet, and finally a guitar solo. This variation of players and combinations of instruments keeps things interesting while introducing Asari’s musical vision for her debut release.

The first two tracks on Introducin’ are instantly welcoming, with the nice bossa group sound on “Triste” followed by a bluesy jazz groove on Asari’s original “Summit”, a song with a classic vintage vibe recalling the feeling of Grant Green or Sonny Clark albums. Next, “Black Orpheus” pairs Asari with guitarist Sadanori Nakamure for the hypnotic sound of two guitars playing off of each other. (Asari is also featured on a 2022 release entitled /Generations Guitar Trio /with Nakamure and guitarist Mitsukuni Tanabe, expanding on this layered guitar sound with a full album).

Other highlights include a comfortably swinging jazz quartet on “Bluesette”, up-tempo excitement on “Daahood”, and even some pop easy-listening with two Carpenters songs played back-to-back near the end of the album. Asari ends with an especially sentimental guitar solo on “But Beautiful”, leaving a warm impression as a lasting introduction to her music.

Liner Notes

(Translated from the original Japanese liner notes written by Hiro Yamanaka.)

In the summer of 2015, I was in Ochanomizu covering the finals of the Gibson Jazz Guitar contest. While exchanging pleasantries with an acquaintance who was a jazz guitarist, she told me about a wonderful young woman, a guitarist who was appearing that day. That was the day I first heard the playing of Fumika Asari.

It was also the day that signaled to me the coming of a new generation, as I heard the traditional old-style playing (in a good way) of a guitarist still in her early 20s. After that, I had the opportunity to interview her several times for jazz magazines, and as I got to know her personally I could sense her unchanging honest characteristics, and perhaps a slightly stubborn side as well, if I may be so bold. I was happy as I sensed the progress of her guitar playing over time as if it were my own accomplishment. As she was polishing her skills accumulating many live performances with excellent musicians, it was not only this writer but many jazz guitar fans who were looking forward to her debut recording. And now that time has come.

Anyone listening to this work Introducin’ will certainly feel happy. You can understand how she loves jazz, and how she studied the playing styles of many legends. Rather than writing liner notes in the old style of a track-by-track explanation, it seems unnecessary because the listener’s heart and ears will judge while enjoying the music. So here I will write mainly about my honest feelings.

There are many jazz guitarists in Japan’s jazz scene now expressing themselves in different styles. In particular, young guitarists seem to prefer a traditional style. Of course, there are guitarists such as May Inoue who pursue new expressions and styles, which is an attractive part of the future of Japanese jazz guitar.

Fumika Asari’s jazz origins were most likely influenced by Mingus, an old jazz cafe in her hometown of Fukushima City where she heard the music of players like Grant Green and Jim Hall.

As those who know these two legends are aware, their musical sensibilities vary widely, yet she absorbed them simultaneously. For example, you can hear a strong Grant Green style in the straight melodic expression in “Triste” and “Bluesette”, but when it comes to ad-libbed improvisation, within the Grant Green style you can hear some Jim Hall coexisting in the construction of harmony and flow of her phrasing.

Emily Remler is another guitarist who influenced her. In addition to Remler’s hard-picking and powerful swing, perhaps the recording of “Daahoud” here is influenced by Remler’s recording of “Daahoud.” As for “Daahoud,” the name comes from a colleague of composer Clifford Brown, the trumpeter Talib Dawud. This must be an expression of respect characteristic of jazz players.

This album contains two original songs, both of which are excellent and fully express Asari’s sensitivity. Surely I’m not the only one who can also feel the good sensibility of Emily Remler here. And the seventh and eighth songs are arranged like a medley of two hit songs by a band she loves, the Carpenters. It’s a really smart, crowd-pleasing technique.

Picking highlights is difficult when all the tracks are so good, but the duo on “Black Orpheus” with Japanese jazz guitar god Sadanori Nakamure naturally deserves special mention. In recent years, Asari has been performing regularly in a guitar trio with Nakamure and Mitsukuni Tanabe, and knowing their minds so well they breathe life into the songs head-on. It’s quite admirable. Incidentally, both Asari and Nakamure were born in the Year of the Rooster, yet there is a sixty-year age difference!

How is Fumika Asari’s debut album? The guitar tone is incredibly beautiful! Plus, the importance of the melody and poetic sentiment is conveyed. And, the special attention paid to the various formations, and the support of the participating musicians really shines through. In the 1947 American film Road to Rio, Bing Crosby sings the song “But Beautiful” with lyrics comparing the aspects of love. I don’t think that this meaning here of the word “beautiful” is the same as the Japanese word “utsukushii” (beautiful). As this “beautiful” is expressed by the meaning of the lyrics as “subarashii” (wonderful), such is Fumika Asari’s solo guitar beautiful.

Jazz journalist Hiro Yamanaka 山中弘行

Audio and Video

• Fumika Asari playing track #4 “Bluesette” with ceramic art by Mika Noguchi:

• Fumika Asari Quartet playing “Daahood” live, track #5 on this album:

• Excerpt from track #1: “Triste”