Terumasa Hino

May Dance is the breakthrough fusion session. With a New York quartet featuring John Scofield, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, Hino announced his arrival on the American scene with music that was both sophisticated and viscerally exciting. There is no keyboard player: the absence of a chordal instrument opens the music up, giving Scofield's angular, blues-inflected guitar and Hino's brighter, more lyrical trumpet room to stretch across the full harmonic field without a safety net.

Carter and Williams need no introduction: they are two of the most important rhythm section musicians in jazz history, and their playing here has the relaxed authority of musicians who know exactly how good they are and have nothing to prove. Williams drives the uptempo tracks with ferocious energy, while Carter's bass lines anchor every piece with walking figures that are both precise and deeply swinging.

Scofield's solos are characteristically inventive, his tone slightly distorted and his lines full of the chromatic surprises that would become his signature. Hino matches him idea for idea, their trading passages bristling with competitive energy that never tips into aggression. There is no title track; the longest piece is Hino's "Free Land," at nine and a half minutes. A pianoless quartet record of real ambition, and one that has aged better than most fusion sessions of the era.

Hip Seagull is a two-continent production, split between Victor Studios in Tokyo and Sound Ideas Studio in New York, and the music reflects both cities. Kohsuke Mine's tenor and soprano saxophone join Hino in the front line, while Scofield's guitar returns from May Dance to bridge the two worlds. Mikio Masuda's Fender Rhodes gives the harmony a warm, pulsing center that the pianoless May Dance deliberately avoided.

The rhythm section is deep: Clint Houston's bass anchors every track with fluid, singing lines, while the drum chair rotates between Motohiko Hino (on the title track) and George Ohtsuka on the remaining pieces. M'tume's percussion adds a layer of polyrhythmic complexity that pushes the music toward jazz-funk territory without abandoning the improvisational core. The vocal contributions from Kimiko Kasai and Tawatha add a further dimension, their voices woven into the arrangements rather than spotlighted.

Mine's tenor work is commanding, his tone full and hard-edged in contrast to Hino's brighter trumpet. Their unison lines on the title track have a crackling energy, and their solo exchanges are among the most exciting passages in either musician's discography. The production is clean and punchy, the Flying Disk sound leaning toward the commercial end without losing the improvisational heat. A high point of the late-1970s Japanese fusion movement.

City Connection is the most ambitious record in the discography: a large-ensemble production recorded at A&R Studios in New York with a cast that reads like a who's who of late-1970s session royalty. Randy Brecker and Marvin Stamm join Hino in the brass section, Dave Liebman and Ronnie Cuber anchor the reeds, Anthony Jackson's electric bass and Howard King's drums lock into grooves that are both heavy and precise. Harry Whitaker and Leon Pendarvis split the arranging duties and play keyboards throughout.

The arrangements are sophisticated, layered with horns and strings that give the music a cinematic sweep without burying the improvisational core. David Spinozza's guitar work is subtle and effective, his rhythm playing providing texture while his solos cut through the orchestral density with clarity. Nana Vasconcelos's percussion adds a Brazilian inflection that lifts every track, his percussion and vocal sounds threading through the mix like a second melody line.

Hino switches between cornet and flugelhorn, his tone warm and centered even in the thickest passages. The title track is a standout, the full ensemble hitting with the precision of a big band but the looseness of a funk group. Janice Pendarvis and Lani Groves add vocal textures that tip certain tracks toward smooth jazz territory, but the improvisational heat from Liebman, Brecker, and Hino himself keeps the record honest. A lavish production that never loses sight of the music at its center.

Horizon is not a new session: it is a 1979 CBS/Sony compilation of acoustic tracks from two earlier albums, Journey Into My Mind and Into Eternity, recorded in Tokyo in December 1973 and May 1974. The band is his working group of the time, with Mikio Masuda on piano, Tsutomu Okada on bass, Motohiko Hino on drums and Hideo Miyata and Takao Uematsu on saxophones, and "My Funny Valentine" is a duet for trumpet and piano alone.

The playing, as always, is excellent. Hino's tone is gorgeous, and his melodic sense ensures that even the freest passages have moments of real beauty. His flugelhorn on Masuda's "Song for Bumiji" is particularly fine, warm and rich.

As a single LP of excerpts, though, it loses the shape of the two albums it draws on, and those are the better way in. The title comes from its thirteen-minute opener, a Hino tune first issued on Into Eternity in 1974.