There are seven songs on Echo which run from about six to ten minutes each. Nishiyama’s piano trio with bassist Toru Nishijima and drummer Ryo Noritake constitutes the core of the sound, with colorful layers added by the extra trio of Takanori Suzuki on clarinet, Ryosuke Hashizume on tenor sax and flute, and Maiko on violin. Much of the music has the piano trio buffeted by the texturally slow-moving audio pads of clarinet, sax, and violin, creating a plush ambience and quiet invitation to sink into /Echo/’s layers.

One unmistakable strength of these two recent albums is how Nishiyama’s composing style has shifted slightly from her previous modern jazz trio writing, which was often compared to classically tinged European-style jazz and sometimes called richly emotionally or even “sad music” at times. Of course, there are still overtones of introspection on Echo that run throughout. Several of the song’s melodies feature chromatically interesting accidentals or scales with intervals that are subtly surprising and pleasing. Jazz swing beats are rare here, with straight-eights or soft rock drums to enhance the easy movements and slow-to-medium tempos. The violin, clarinet, sax, and flute accompaniments are paintbrushes for the borders and backdrops of Nishiyama’s canvases, where the frontward trio of piano, bass, and drums collaborate on creating and transforming the objects of direct focus. Although the so-called background instruments also come to the front at times, this is moderately done, and the use of their layers and textures as sonic ground and textures is beautiful and effective.

The compositions also feature slow-moving ambient sections that are superbly enhanced by Nishijima’s bowed contrabass, and rock-beat riffs that recall her style on her separate heavy metal-inspired jazz project NHORHM. There are sections of songs where the pianist’s left hand plays solid guitar-like chords, catchy quarter-note pop rhythms, or delicately spun ostinatos to great effect. The overall energy level is calm, somewhat muted, and taken at patient tempos. It’s more like a deeply absorbing novel or modern art piece with layers to uncover, rather than the fast cuts of an action movie or high-paced show. Yet interestingly, parts of these songs feel as if they would fit perfectly as scores to accompany moments of drama or discovery in movie scenes.

Like the design and concept, the songs themselves naturally summon evocative images through Nishiyama’s writing style, orchestration, and arrangements (and her particular choice of song titles, as well). Tracks #1 “Echo” and #2 “West World” (no relation to the recent drama series) are the opening chapters, where she is directed towards aspects of pop music catchiness, hooks, and musical movement that make such affecting hit songs. #3 “Ants” is slow, sparse, and semi-experimental with suite-like section breaks. These characteristics are shared and expanded upon by the grand displays in #4 “Arrakis”, dynamically crystalizing the oppressive tension of the Frank Herbert world-building fantasy with power and exotic mystery.

Track #5 “Raindrops”, the sole piano/bass/drums trio track on the album, explores an absorbing nine minutes of free but coordinated scenes in flexible time, gracefully Debussey-ish arpeggios, bowed contrabass, and hints of ambient music. #6 “Cobalt Blue” features slow chord cushions and subtle piano power chord riffs to allow the background instruments to come to the front for some in-turn and simultaneous improvisation. Finally, the last track #7 “River” moodily balances the major/minor shifts of the album’s overall feel with a soundtrack-like song for a sweet goodbye to a moving and memorable album. The reverberations of both Dot and Echo linger, though, and ensure anticipated return journeys to Nishiyama’s distinctive and penetrating musical worlds in the future.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album:

• Live performance of “Echo”, track #1 on this album:

• Excerpts from a live performance of the Hitomi Nishiyama Trio +3 from 2024:

• Streaming services for this album

• Excerpt from track #4: “Arrakis”

From the previous album to this one, the imagery shifts from close (raindrops on a window) to far, with natural scenery in theme for both. A second link to her previous album is found in a track on the Beloved Ones, “Rainy Song #3 In Winter”. This song continues the story started in the opening two tracks on Inner Views, “Rainy Song 1: At Midnight” and “Rainy Song 2: In the Forest”. Comparing the two album covers and the pieces’ progression, the rain has stopped and the eye’s focus has extended further into the world, onto meadows, trees, and mountains.

Within the calm music like some tracks on Beloved Ones, understated music can say so much. It speaks quietly and does not rouse in overly obvious ways, but seeps in like unstoppable truths, extending like liquid flowing and pooling on a smooth flat surface.

Between one standard swing tune and one free ambient exploration (relatively moderate on both counts), the rest of the tracks occupy the space in between. Mostly there is a subtle, straight-eight feel throughout. Yanagihara’s music is richly colored by drummer Ryo Noritake, and he provides not just background time pulse but a lot of expertly applied shading and dynamics.

The album starts liltingly with a softly falling “Snowflake” before moving into more Jarrett-y country folk with “Landscape”. Next is the swinging jazz standard “All the Things You Are” (video below) which includes a mesmerizing drum solo from Noritake that spreads out in masterful sonic construction.

“Rainy Song #3 In Winter” continues the story started on Inner Views, and is a demonstration of the wilder, busier side of the trio. Things seem to happen simultaneously with a controlled chaos effect which becomes an exciting highlight on the album.

“Move On” (also in a video below) is impressionistic and poetic, warm like a welcoming embrace. “Loved One” emerges from the title as a bluesy, hymn-like space for a slowed-down break. “Ripple” is a floating, freeish song with simultaneous improvisation where the theme unveils itself slowly and majestically in the trio’s painting. “Surreal Sunset” returns with another Jarrett-like light rockish rollick, almost “Prism”-esque with interesting angles (as does a sunset through a prism becomes surreal, perhaps). The album closes with the dramatic storytelling of “Spring, Blue Sky” with more creative changes and structures.

With Beloved Ones, serenity is balanced with the stimulations of jazz playing and concepts. There is a feeling of loving-kindness radiating from the title and through the music. Enhancing the calm are the images of nature and natural settings. Peace is brought to life by Yuka Yanagihara’s trio, her music, and song titles, surpassing the limits of language but lifting off from these words: “Snowflake”, “Landscape”, “All the Things You Are”, “Rainy Song”, “Move On”, “Loved One”, “Ripple”, “Surreal Sunset”, “Spring, Blue Sky”. Beloved Ones.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for “All the Things You Are”, track #3 on this album:

• Promotional video for “Move on”, track #5 on this album:

• Excerpt from track #1: “Snowflake”

Nishiyama has released many great albums since 2004, and yet it is tempting to call this significant Dot her masterpiece. As a prolific composer with consistent album releases over two decades, many peaks have been reached. Dot forges into some bold new territory, and successfully so.

With an acoustic piano trio as a base, Nishiyama’s concepts are wider, open, more abstract. Four tracks feature a piano/bass/drums trio, and five tracks add clarinet, violin, and saxophone/flute for extra layers of artistic splashes. The sextet, with wind and strings, paints dappled backdrops and textured backgrounds on her canvas, and at a few particular moments, even converges as the ethereal resonance of metal fatigue and shearing.

Although not purely ambient nor experimental, some of her music on Dot verges more in that direction with ECM-style touches than ever before. As an example, regular in-time rhythms played by drummer Noritake are balanced with long periods of free and abstract swashes of sound, fluid spaciousness reminiscent of Paul Motian.

Take the beginning, with dreamy blossoming and dissolving on track #1 “Turtledove” and continuing into the hypnotic spell of track #2 “Dot”, a steady drum beat doesn’t appear until the last third of the absorbing, multi-part second track. “Dot” (available to listen to in a video included below) starts with a moderated stream of repeated piano notes, played like the careful picking of a single guitar string. It’s almost like a guitar riff, chugging and shifting through four frets to build the four-pitch melody with an embedded offset. Nishiyama’s attraction to heavy metal music likely influenced her here, as with her separate acoustic jazz piano trio project N.H.O.R.H.M. which focuses on heavy metal covers.

This riff-based approach is subtle and not overplayed, but also appears on another highlight, track #8 “Baroness”. With an edgily modern, semi-medieval feel, lightly crunching chords turn around four corners similarly to set up a riff, the harmonic frame for a melody to play out in graceful curves and more repeated-note dot patterns.

Other songs on the album plunge on in swing and straight eights. #3 “The Rider” and #6 “Red and Yellow” are particularly catchy and comfortably grounded with Mehldauesque intricacy and depth, comfortable stops between the more unbounded reaches of the album.

Those adventurous corners include the dramatic, up-close experience of #5 “Tidal”, where vamps of rolling chords and turbulent drums together with the sextet’s improvisations summon ominous waves of sound like oceanic forces.

For more variety, there is even slight melodic and rhythmic quirkiness included. Track #4 “To Return” is a playful swing with an unhurried, Monkish sense. Track #7 “Pigeons” reflects the bouncy personalities of those odd birds, a comical jazz waltz on cobblestones.

The journey leads to the last track, #8 “Lighthouse”. This restful end provides an adventure’s conclusion through a liltingly pretty melody passed from clarinet to bowed double bass, to piano, and back again as drums lightly color in accents and timbres across the set.

What about Dot? Is this innocent word a hidden theme or message for the album? Music notes written as dots on a staff? Pointillistic art that approximates waveforms and curves, backgrounds and landscapes? A blemish, a beauty mark, a pixel, typographic symbol, piece of code? Atoms creating form as they group and assemble? The repeating, somber yet heartening beep of a machine monitoring a pulse? Or maybe, simply the end of a sentence.

There are also the dot-like sequences of melody in some of the songs. And, there is the single extended note that ends the album, the last note of “Lighthouse” played in unison by the sextet, a fading dot beamed out to show the way home.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for “Dot”, track #2 on this album:

• Promotional video with excerpts from #5 “Tidal”, #4 “To Return”, #7 “Pigeons”, and #2 “Dot”:

• Excerpt from track #3: “ザ・ライダー (The Rider)”

With Fukutomi’s compositions and his guitar taking center stage, the quartet’s sound is definitely that of a jazz guitar leader’s band. The sound of the jazz guitar is varied, however, and his tone switches between mellow and fluid electric guitar sound to clear and articulate acoustic guitar, coloring the compositions with distinct personalities to suit the song style. Some guitar effects are also used tastefully to add textural layers while preserving the core sound of pure guitar expressiveness.

Adding to the sonic mix is Koichi Sato’s use of both acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes keyboard. While the songs with acoustic piano have more of an acoustic jazz combo feel (naturally), several album highlights (#2, “Minor King”, #8, “Memory Stones”) feature the Rhodes together with electric guitar, bass, and drums to create the cool and controlled sound of jazz bordering on fusion with a light rock beat pulse.

This modern groove sound and the variation in instrumentation are well-suited to the structures and compositional extras that Fukutomi includes in certain songs. Several interludes, codas, and odd-meter time signatures increase the overall variety with the feeling of bonus surprises. Yet the charts do not get in the way of the soloists and the band is tightly coordinated, and each member gets their turn to make musical statements along with the leader.

The final two tracks close the album with friendly, down-to-earth elements to the already easily approachable music. On #9, “Mawaru Sekai”, Fukutomi adds his harmonica playing to the quartet, while the final song #10, “Trees & Branches”, features Fukutomi alone for a quiet guitar ballad played with emotion and soul, conjuring the bittersweet feeling of parting, for now.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album:

• Live recording of “I Should Care” by the Hiroshi Fukutomi Trio:

• Audio for “Memory Stones”, track #8 on this album

• Audio for “Mawaru Sekai”, track #9 on this album

• Excerpt from track #2: “Minor King”

Over nine tracks (one song is repeated on solo piano as a bonus track), the synergetic trio creates image-like moods through Yanagihara’s original compositions. The music here focused on setting up a comfortable place with each tune, emphasizing atmosphere over flash, with waves of enveloping grooves pinned to lightly rocking rhythms.

The musical ambience is set up from the two-track opener “Rainy Song 1: At Midnight” and “Rainy Song 2: In the Forest”, where understated melodies shift and transform over subtly mesmerizing harmonies and rhythms. Similar mood-setting styles continue through the album on tracks like “Melancholia” with its strong backbeat and the lovely and thoughtful “After Tours”.

On Inner Views, the trio’s musical influences seem to draw from ECM ambient jazz and the stylistic modern jazz of E.S.T. or Bob James, with tiny hints of contemporary pop songwriters like Sting and James Taylor also in the mix. The mood is mostly consistent throughout, with the dynamics mostly staying between the sole bouncy swing jazz track “Traffic Jam” and the tranquil ballad “Silence”.

The final song, a solo piano rendition of “Moon Dance” (also played with the trio on track five), gives the listener an intimate ten minutes with the pianist as she builds up, deconstructs, and rebuilds to a dramatic close.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album:

• Audio for “Moon Dance”, track #5 on this album:

• Excerpt from track #8: “After Tours”

The pianists and drummers are all players who perform with the bassist on different albums and at live shows in Japan, and each member adds personal touches and dynamics to the combos. The majority of songs are originals from the bassist, with the balance being in favor of slower tempo ballads and relaxed moods built upon the bassist’s deep, weighty sound and timing. A few uptempo numbers are included, starting with the album opener West Side Story’s “Tonight” which kicks things off with a great swing beat, Yasukawaga’s own joyful “My Bebop Tune”, and an exuberantly wild “Circle III”.

In addition to providing a glimpse into the modern working trio in Tokyo’s current jazz scene, Trios II is also a great standalone package of jazz piano trios performing Yasukagawa’s music for a comfortable, mood-enhancing collection.

Audio and Video

• Daiki Yasukagawa Trio video for Trios II:

• Excerpt from track #1: “Tonight”

The 10 original songs on this album unfold in the emotion-heavy Brad Mehldau vein of modern piano trio jazz. Patient, somber ballads lie alongside straight-ahead compositions thick with melodic effusions, traces of classical influence, and bluesy suggestions as well.

This album also includes free moments which leave the musical structure open compositionally, allowing the trio to slowly create mysterious, sensitive soundscapes, searching and reaching for expression. At times somber and wistful (with the recent death of the pianist’s father being cited as an influence on the music), there is also grace and forward-momentum on this trio’s journey through this comforting, introspective music.

Audio and Video

• Promotional video for this album with album excerpts played live:

• Excerpt from track #2: “Dream Garden”

Sato conceived the main theme while traveling in Norway and viewing a certain painting. The work of art, Art Rolfsen’s “The Big Station”, graces the cover and inspired “The Railway Station”, a four-part suite arranged over four tracks. This music emerges and recedes through tracks #1, 6, 9, and 12, resulting in four distinct songs with common echoes.

From this setting and throughout the rest of the album, beautiful music blossoms and inspires scenes of travel. Dramatic compositions with full, earthy sounds create moods spanning excitement, relaxation, hectic impressionism, and, naturally, melancholy. This music embraces emotions that may arise at different times during a long journey, a soundtrack to a trip, a modern work of art.

Audio and Video

• Audio samples from the CD:

• Excerpt from track #1: “The Railway Station”