Kohsuke Mine

Seventeen years passed between Sunshower and Major to Minor, and Mine spent them on the bandstand and in other people’s bands rather than making records under his own name. When he returned to recording in 1993, on dates taped at the Body & Soul club in Tokyo, the voice was deeper, the harmonic conception more spacious, but the essential qualities were unchanged: the same restraint, the same warmth, the same preference for the interior of a melody over its surface.

Major to Minor is organized around the contrast suggested by its title, alternating between the warmth of major tonalities and the more introspective quality of minor ones, and Mine moves between them with the ease of someone who has been playing these changes for thirty years. The quintet suits him perfectly at this stage: nothing to prove, nothing to hide, and a front line of guitar and piano to lean into.

Verve's Japanese arm was an excellent home for Mine in this period, its commitment to quality recording and patient artistic development matching his own sensibility. Major to Minor is the beginning of a strong late-career run that would continue for nearly three more decades.

Saxophone and piano in dialogue is one of jazz’s most unforgiving formats: nowhere to hide, every choice audible, the music entirely dependent on two players who trust each other completely. Mine and Kikuchi had been working together since Mine joined Kikuchi's band in 1969, and the trust is evident from the first track, and what they build together over the course of this record is something genuinely intimate.

The absence of bass and drums changes Mine’s rhythmic approach, loosening his phrasing and giving it a more vocal quality. Without a timekeeper, he can linger on a note or push through a phrase at will, and Kikuchi shadows him with extraordinary sensitivity, the piano melodic and contrapuntal in equal measure rather than simply laying down changes.

Duo is one of those records that makes you wonder why the format isn't used more often. The results are more complete and more varied than you'd expect, and the sense of two musicians in real conversation, rather than one leading and one following, is genuinely rare.

In a Maze is the most atmospheric of these four, the title suggesting something of its quality: not lost exactly, but wandering with intention, exploring without a fixed destination. The compositions are more abstract than on Major to Minor, the harmonic language pushing further from the jazz mainstream of the era.

There are passages here where Mine’s tenor approaches the territory of ECM at its most minimal, the sound sparse and meditative in a way that's beautiful but also somewhat disconnected from the warmth that characterizes his best work. It's a valid direction; it just isn't quite where Mine is most himself.

In a Maze is worth hearing as a document of Mine in an exploratory mood, and there are individual moments of real beauty. But as an album experience it's a step behind the flanking records, more interested in texture than in the musical conversation that makes Duo and Major to Minor compelling.

Balancez finds Mine back with the quintet that made Major to Minor and In a Maze, with renewed purpose, the slight abstractness of In a Maze replaced by a more engaged relationship to swing and melody. The French title, suggesting balance, describes both the group dynamic and the musical approach: tenor and soprano in balance, abstraction and melody in balance, Japanese and American influences in balance.

Tsutomu Okada’s bass continues to be an ideal companion, and Ryojiro Furusawa’s drums give the music a propulsive quality that the duo record necessarily lacked. Mine sounds energized by the fuller ensemble, his phrasing more decisive and his use of space more confident.

Balancez is a strong closing statement on this chapter: mature, assured, and fully in command. Mine at fifty-three sounds like a musician at the height of his powers rather than one looking backward, which would continue to be true for another two decades.