Kohsuke Mine
Kohsuke Mine is one of Japan's most gifted post-bop saxophonists. The Three Blind Mice and East Wind records of the 1970s are the records international collectors reach for first; the Verve returns of the 1990s and the late independent releases through 2019 fill out a fifty-year leader catalog. Sixteen albums across three eras. Browse below.
Browse by Era
Each era page covers a distinct period in Kohsuke's career, with full reviews, personnel details, Apple Music audio previews, and album art for every record.
Seven albums covering Mine's first stretch as a leader. The Philips debut (First / Morning Tide), the two Three Blind Mice dates (Mine, Second Album), the Victor date (Daguri) and the three East Wind records (Out of Chaos, Solid, Sunshower) that established him as one of Japan's foremost post-bop saxophonists.
Four records from Mine's mid-career return after a long gap in his leader discography. Major to Minor, Duo, In a Maze, and Balancez document the harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary he had built across two decades of sideman and session work.
Five late-career releases on independent and small Japanese labels. Rendezvous, Plays Standard, With Your Soul, Live Lab, and Bamboo Grove. The records that close out the catalog of one of Japan's most gifted modern saxophonists.
Kohsuke Mine, b. 1944
Kohsuke Mine was born February 6, 1944, in Tokyo. He took up the saxophone in high school and was active on the Tokyo club scene by his early twenties, working as a sideman with Hisashige Kato and Masabumi Kikuchi, among others, before signing with Three Blind Mice as a leader in 1970.
The early leader records (First / Morning Tide on Philips, Mine and Second Album on Three Blind Mice, Daguri on Victor) established him as one of the leading Japanese hard bop and post-bop saxophonists of the early 1970s. The move to East Wind in 1974 produced three more records (Out of Chaos, Solid, Sunshower) that pushed his playing into more spiritual and modal territory.
The leader catalog goes quiet after 1976, with Mine co-founding the popular fusion band Native Son with pianist Takehiro Honda in 1978 and working as a sideman, educator, and session player through the 1980s. The return on Verve in 1993 (Major to Minor) opens a second leader run that continued through the 1990s and into the late independent releases of the 2000s and 2010s.