Terumasa Hino

Fuji gathers the threads of the previous three years: the hard bop foundation of the Columbia dates, the electric experiments of Hi-nology, the spiritual searching of Peace and Love, and the international perspective gained from the European and American sessions. Recorded at Victor Studio in Tokyo on a single day, March 8, 1972, the sextet plays with the focus and intensity of musicians who know exactly what they want to say.

Takao Uematsu's tenor provides the front-line weight, while Mikio Masuda's piano gives the harmony a solidity and direction that the freer sessions sometimes missed. Kiyoshi Sugimoto's guitar adds textural depth, and Yoshio Ikeda's bass anchors the rhythm section alongside Motohiko. Hino's compositions here are among his strongest: thematically rich, harmonically varied, and structured to give the soloists maximum freedom within a clear framework.

The title piece is a meditation on the mountain itself: patient, massive, and serene. Hino's flugelhorn floats above a slowly shifting bed of piano and bass, the melody rising and falling like the slopes of Fuji seen from a distance. It is one of the most beautiful pieces he ever wrote, and the performance is definitive.

Recorded at The Recital in Tokyo on June 2, 1973, this Three Blind Mice release (TBM-17) captures Hino's working quintet at peak intensity. Mikio Masuda's piano and Yoshio Ikeda's bass form the harmonic backbone, while Yuji Imamura's congas add the polyrhythmic density that had become essential to the group's sound. The live setting brings out qualities that studio recordings can only suggest: a physical intensity, a sense of bodies in motion and air being moved.

Hino's trumpet is at its most commanding, alternating between long, lyrical lines and explosive bursts that test the limits of the instrument. The extended performances push into free territory while maintaining an emotional directness that keeps the music accessible even at its most abstract. The audience is audibly engaged, and the band feeds on that energy.

Motohiko's drumming is astonishing throughout, his polyrhythmic complexity married to a raw energy that drives the music forward with irresistible force. Imamura's congas interlock with the drums to create a rhythmic tapestry that is denser and more African-inflected than anything on the studio records. Three Blind Mice's engineering captures the full dynamic range without compression. One of the essential Hino recordings.

Named for Hino's young son, Taro's Mood was recorded live at the Jazzclub Domicile in Munich less than a month after the Three Blind Mice session, with the same quintet. The Domicile was one of Europe's most important jazz venues in this period, and Enja's relationship with the club produced some of the label's finest live documents. The compositions are shorter and more melodically focused than the Tokyo concert, the overall feel warmer.

Mikio Masuda's piano is particularly effective in the intimate Domicile setting, his voicings cleaner and more exposed than in the larger Tokyo room. Yoshio Ikeda's bass walks with authority, and Imamura's percussion is more restrained than on the TBM date, giving the music a subtler rhythmic texture. The title track is one of Hino's loveliest melodies, played with a softness that borders on tenderness.

Enja's characteristically warm, natural sound quality serves this music well. The label had a gift for capturing acoustic instruments in ways that felt present and immediate without being clinical, and the trumpet tone on these tracks has a three-dimensional quality that draws you in. A smaller record than its neighbors, but an essential piece of the emotional puzzle.

Journey into My Mind is the most ambitious record of 1973, an octet session for CBS/Sony that assembles some of the finest horn players in Japanese jazz. Takao Uematsu and Hidefumi Toki on saxophones, Hideo Miyata on flute and saxophone, and Shigeharu Mukai on trombone give Hino a brass and reed section that can move from unison themes to complex polyphonic writing, and the compositions exploit every possibility.

Recorded across two December days, the music has a density and orchestral ambition the quintet dates could not attempt. Mikio Masuda's piano and Tsutomu Okada's bass anchor the rhythm section while Motohiko drives from below. The writing moves between tightly arranged passages and open blowing sections, the transitions handled with the confidence of a leader who knows exactly what each musician can contribute.

The larger ensemble gives the music a weight and harmonic richness that the smaller groups couldn't match. Mukai's trombone and Miyata's flute add colors that expand the tonal palette far beyond the standard trumpet-and-tenor frontline, and the interplay between the horns is consistently imaginative. A different kind of Hino record, and one that repays the extra attention it demands.

Into Eternity is the second CBS/Sony session, recorded across five days in late May and early June 1974. Hideo Miyata on tenor and soprano saxophone replaces the larger horn section of Journey into My Mind, returning the music to the quintet format. Mikio Masuda and Tsutomu Okada continue in the rhythm section, and the tighter ensemble gives the compositions a directness the octet couldn't always achieve.

Miyata's soprano saxophone is especially effective alongside Hino's trumpet, the two instruments occupying a similar range but with contrasting timbres that create a distinctive front-line sound. Masuda's piano has grown more assertive since the TBM and Enja live dates, and his comping pushes the soloists into unexpected harmonic areas. Motohiko's drumming is at its most flexible, shifting between straight-ahead swing and polyrhythmic abstraction within the same piece.

The album's longer pieces are its best, giving the musicians room to develop ideas over time. The closing track builds from near-silence to a cathartic climax that ranks among the most powerful moments in the discography. With Speak to Loneliness still eight months away, this is the last record before Hino's definitive farewell to the Japanese scene.

An unexpected detour. Mas Que Nada finds Hino working with vocalist and bandleader Masami Kawahara and the Latin ensemble Los Robelos on a program of Brazilian and Latin jazz standards, including Jorge Ben's title track. The RCA label was looking for crossover potential, and this is unmistakably a commercial project, the arrangements polished, the tempos easy, the mood light.

Hino's trumpet playing is fine throughout, his tone warm and his phrasing graceful, but the material never pushes him into territory where his particular gifts can shine. He is a thoroughbred running in a trot. The Latin rhythms suit him better than you might expect, and his interactions with the percussion section have a natural feel, but the overall impression is of a gifted musician operating well within his comfort zone on someone else's terms.

For fans of Japanese Latin jazz or easy-listening jazz, there is real pleasure here. Kawahara's ensemble is tight and musical, and the production is clean. But within the arc of Hino's career, this is a footnote rather than a chapter: a session that paid the bills between the more adventurous projects that defined his artistic trajectory.

Billed as a farewell concert before Hino's permanent move to New York, Live in Concert was recorded at Yuhbinchokin Hall in Tokyo on April 14, 1975 with an eleven-piece ensemble that represents a summit of Japanese jazz talent. Sadao Watanabe on alto saxophone, Hideo Miyata on tenor, Shigeharu Mukai on trombone, and the full rhythm section of Itabashi, Sugimoto, Okada, Motohiko, Imamura, and Masahiko Togashi: this is the largest and most star-studded group Hino had ever led on record.

The extended improvisations push past fifteen minutes on several tracks, and the playing never flags. The horn section gives the music a brassy weight that the quintet dates could not achieve, and Watanabe's alto and Hino's trumpet make a particularly compelling front line. Togashi's percussion adds another layer to the already dense rhythmic texture of Imamura and Motohiko.

East Wind's engineering is characteristically excellent, capturing the full spectrum of the live sound without sacrificing clarity. The bass is firm and present, the drums have both detail and weight, and Hino's trumpet sits in the mix with natural authority. Alongside Speak to Loneliness (recorded three months earlier), this makes a compelling case for 1975 as the peak of Hino's Japanese career.

Six years separate Hi-nology from Speak to Loneliness, and the distance traveled is immense. The trio of pieces here, spread across nearly forty minutes, represent Hino at his most expansive and compositionally ambitious. The title track alone runs over eighteen minutes, opening with a quiet, circling figure from Fumio Itabashi's piano before the full ensemble enters in waves: first Motohiko Hino's drums, then the twin tenors of Miyata and Shimizu, then Sugimoto's guitar threading through the texture, and finally Hino's trumpet, entering late and high, as if arriving from a great distance.

Hiromasa Suzuki's arrangements for the expanded ensemble are masterful. He gives the larger group a chamber-music clarity, each voice distinct and purposefully placed. "Little Lovers" is the lyrical centerpiece, a ballad of genuine tenderness where Hino's tone is at its warmest, his vibrato wide and unhurried. Guilherme Franco's percussion adds a Brazilian coloring that never overwhelms the Japanese sensibility at the music's core.

The closing "Hi-nology," a reimagining of the title track from the 1969 album, makes the transformation explicit. Where the original was electric and urgent, this version is contemplative and vast, the expanded instrumentation giving the melody a depth and resonance it never had before. Hino's trumpet floats over the ensemble with a serenity that speaks to hard-won maturity. This is one of the finest records on the East Wind label, and one of the essential documents of 1970s Japanese jazz.

"Hogiuta" translates roughly as "lullaby," and the album named for it is among the most deeply felt records in Hino's catalog. Recorded at Vanguard Studio in New York City across three May 1976 sessions, the quartet is stripped to essentials: trumpet, bass, drums, percussion. No piano, no horn, no guitar. Cecil McBee's acoustic bass and M'tume's percussion replace the Japanese rhythm section entirely, placing Hino squarely in the American post-Coltrane idiom.

McBee, who had played with Pharoah Sanders and Charles Lloyd, brings a spiritual jazz vocabulary that meshes perfectly with Hino's own direction. M'tume (James Mtume Heath), who had recently worked with Miles Davis, adds a percussive intensity that is both African-rooted and completely of its moment. The vocal elements from all four musicians give several tracks a ritualistic, communal quality that the earlier records never attempted.

Motohiko's drumming adapts to the new context with characteristic intelligence, his playing more textural and less metronomic than on the Tokyo dates. The title track is heartbreaking: a simple, descending melody that Hino plays with his warmest flugelhorn tone, each note hanging in the air. For those who know Hino primarily as a fiery, high-energy trumpeter, Hogiuta reveals the other side: the quiet, vulnerable musician who could break your heart with a single sustained note.

Nemuro sits at the far northeastern tip of Hokkaido, closer to Russia than to Tokyo, and there is something about the remoteness of the setting that seems to have unlocked an extraordinary performance. The septet here is essentially the Speak to Loneliness band in concert, and the difference between that careful studio recording and this wild, unrestrained live document is the difference between a photograph and a thunderstorm.

The first side is a single extended piece that builds from a slow, almost funereal opening to a sustained crescendo of staggering intensity. Hino's trumpet is at its most powerful, his tone cutting through the full ensemble with an authority that borders on physical force. Miyata's tenor matches him phrase for phrase, and Sugimoto's guitar adds an electric edge that the Speak to Loneliness studio date never attempted.

Itabashi's electric piano adds a textural dimension that anchors the freer passages, while Okada's bass and Imamura's percussion create a rhythmic undertow that pulls the music forward even when the soloists are at their most abstract. Motohiko Hino drives it all with characteristic ferocity. This is arguably the finest live recording in the entire Hino discography, and one of the great Japanese jazz concert documents. That it was not released until 1979, four years after the performance, only adds to its legend.