Terumasa Hino
Terumasa Hino is the most internationally recognized Japanese jazz trumpeter and one of the most prolific Japanese jazz leaders of the 1970s. The catalog moves through three distinct phases: the Columbia and early Tokyo studio years, the middle period of label-hopping across Three Blind Mice, Enja, CBS/Sony, East Wind, and RCA, and the New York fusion records he made after relocating to New York in the mid-1970s. Twenty-six albums across three eras. Browse below.
Browse by Era
Each era page covers a distinct period in Terumasa's career, with full reviews, personnel details, Apple Music audio previews, and album art for every record.
Twelve albums covering Hino's early years across Columbia, Takt, Love Records, Victor, and Canyon. The Tokyo studio dates that established him as the leading Japanese trumpet voice of his generation, including the debut session and the Canyon sessions with Reggie Workman.
Ten records covering the middle period across Victor, Three Blind Mice, Enja, CBS/Sony, East Wind, and RCA. European live dates, the duo with Masabumi Kikuchi, the modal and free explorations that pushed Hino's playing toward the New York fusion sound he would pursue next.
Four records on Flying Disk and CBS/Sony from Hino's New York fusion years, including the CBS/Sony compilation Horizon drawn from his 1973 and 1974 Tokyo sessions. Sessions with John Scofield, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, the band that pushed his playing into the late-1970s electric and post-bop fusion idiom.
Terumasa Hino, b. 1942
Terumasa Hino was born October 25, 1942 in Tokyo, the son of a tap dancer who also played trumpet professionally. He started on trumpet at nine and was working in Japanese big bands by his late teens, and in the mid-1960s he joined Hideo Shiraki's quintet, staying until 1969. By the mid-1960s he was the leading trumpet voice in Tokyo, a hard bop player with technical command and a writing sensibility that drew on Miles Davis and Lee Morgan but pointed somewhere of his own.
The Columbia and Takt years (1967 to 1971) established the catalog. Hi-nology and Alone Together are the records most international listeners encounter first, but the Canyon sessions with Reggie Workman and the Enja date Vibrations are the records that opened Hino to non-Japanese audiences. The Three Blind Mice live recordings and the CBS/Sony dates of the mid-1970s pushed him further into modal and post-bop territory.
Hino moved to New York in 1975, working there with Joanne Brackeen, Elvin Jones, John Scofield, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. The Flying Disk records he made in that period (May Dance, Hip Seagull, City Connection) are the bridge between his Japanese hard bop catalog and the New York fusion mainstream of the late 1970s.
He has continued recording and performing into his eighties. He received the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2004 and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, in 2019.