Terumasa Hino

Terumasa Hino was twenty-five when he made this debut as a leader, and the confidence is startling. Five tracks, no filler, the quartet locked in from the opening bars of "Soulful." What you hear immediately is the tone: bright, piercing, with a vibrato that sits right on the edge of controlled and uncontrolled. It owes something to Freddie Hubbard, something to Lee Morgan, and something that belongs entirely to Hino.

The title track is the heart of the record. Over a brooding minor vamp, Hino builds a solo that starts in the middle register and works its way up with an almost unbearable patience, each phrase a little more insistent than the last. Yuji Ohno's comping underneath is spare and smart, leaving enormous space for the trumpet to breathe. Ohno would later become one of Japan's most celebrated composers, but here he is simply a superb jazz pianist, attentive and rhythmically exact.

Kunimitsu Inaba and Motohiko Hino (Terumasa's younger brother) form a rhythm section that would anchor nearly every important Japanese jazz date of the late 1960s. Their "Summertime" is taut and dark, stripped of any sentimentality, the Gershwin melody treated as a launching pad rather than a destination. This is a debut that already sounds like the work of a fully formed musician.

This is where two of the most important musicians in Japanese jazz history meet as co-leaders for the first time, and the result is extraordinary. Hino had been working in Hideo Shiraki's quintet since 1965, and Kikuchi was already the most adventurous pianist in Tokyo. The intuitive understanding between them is audible from the first notes of "Long Trip," a drawn-out modal piece that moves like weather: slowly, inevitably, with sudden gusts of intensity.

The feel is very much in the Blue Note mode of the late 1960s. Think of the Hank Mobley and Lee Morgan records from the same period: long tracks, a modal center, the rhythm section pushing the soloists into darker and more adventurous territory with each chorus. Kikuchi's piano is restless and angular, never settling into predictable patterns. Takeru Muraoka's tenor saxophone adds a harder, more aggressive voice to the front line, and his solo on "Tender Passion" is one of the most emotionally direct things on the record.

The Inaba-Hino rhythm section is at its peak here. Motohiko Hino's drumming has a coiled, spring-loaded quality, never rushing but always pushing, and Inaba's bass is a gravitational constant underneath the increasingly free explorations of the soloists. "Ideal Portrait" and "H.G. and Pretty" round out a record that stands as the definitive document of late-1960s Japanese hard bop at its most ambitious.

Everything changed on July 31, 1969. The day before, Miles Davis had released In a Silent Way, and the tremor was already rippling through jazz. Hino walked into Yamaha Hall in Ginza with a quintet that had plugged in: Hiromasa Suzuki on electric piano, Kunimitsu Inaba on electric bass, and the same Muraoka-Hino front line from the Kikuchi session, now pointed at a completely different horizon.

The opening track, "Like Miles," is exactly what the title promises and more. Over a repeating electric piano figure and a bass line that throbs rather than walks, Hino plays with a spaciousness and tonal darkness that is new in his work. The influence is unmistakable, but the result is not imitation. Where Miles was cool and distant on In a Silent Way, Hino is fiery and present, his trumpet cutting through the electric haze with an urgency that feels distinctly his own.

Hiromasa Suzuki's electric piano is the key textural element. He would go on to become one of the most important arrangers in Japanese jazz (his own album Cat is a classic), and his playing here is full of harmonic curiosity: dense, slightly dissonant chords that give the rhythm section a weight the acoustic lineup never had. Muraoka's tenor is looser and more abstract than on the Kikuchi date, responding to the new electric context with longer, more searching phrases. This is the record where Hino stopped being a brilliant interpreter of the American idiom and became something more: a voice with its own gravitational pull.

Into the Heaven marked the beginning of a prolific stretch that would see Hino recording several albums a year. The quintet retains Muraoka and the Inaba/Motohiko rhythm section from the earlier dates but replaces Kikuchi with Hiromasa Suzuki at the piano, and the change shifts the group's center of gravity. Suzuki's touch is lighter, more lyrical, and his comping gives the horn players more room to stretch. Where the earlier sessions had the density of hard bop, this is something more open: the compositions breathe, the solos unfold at their own pace, and the rhythm section plays with a looseness that suggests long hours of live performance together.

Muraoka's tenor is darker and more aggressive than on the Columbia dates, and his interplay with Hino has taken on the quality of a real conversation, the two voices pushing and pulling each other through the changes. Motohiko Hino's drumming has grown more complex, full of polyrhythmic accents that owe as much to Tony Williams as to Elvin Jones.

The title track builds from a gentle piano introduction to a full-ensemble climax that rivals anything on the earlier records. This is a quintet playing at the peak of its collective ability, and the recording captures it with an immediacy that studio polish might have blunted.

Journey to Air is Hino's first New York recording, cut at Upsurge Studio in March 1970 with a group of young American musicians who would go on to extraordinary careers. Dave Liebman and Steve Grossman, both barely in their twenties, bring a raw intensity to the front line that pushes the music into territory none of the Tokyo sessions had approached. Olu Dara's second trumpet adds a further layer of harmonic density to the ensemble passages.

The energy of this date is completely different from the Takt/Columbia records. Mike Garson's piano is angular and dissonant, owing more to Cecil Taylor than to any hard bop tradition, and the twin-drum approach with Bobby Moses and Motohiko Hino creates a polyrhythmic undertow that never lets the music settle into comfortable grooves.

The longer pieces push toward free territory with a conviction that the earlier records only hinted at. Hino's playing rises to the challenge of this fiercer company, his phrases growing longer and more adventurous, his tone hardening into something steely and urgent. This is the sound of a musician discovering what he is capable of when surrounded by players who refuse to let him coast.

The second of Hino's 1970 New York recordings, Alone Together places him alongside Steve Grossman and two of the city's finest rhythm section players: Harold Mabern and Richard Davis. The quintet format allows for a different kind of interplay than the large ensemble of Journey to Air. Grossman's alto and soprano work is taut and searing, his post-Coltrane vocabulary filtered through a sensibility already moving toward fusion, and his exchanges with Hino have the crackling tension of two strong personalities finding common ground in real time.

Mabern's piano is the session's ballast: deep-rooted, blues-saturated, anchoring the more abstract passages with a harmonic sureness that keeps the music from floating away. Richard Davis on both acoustic and electric bass provides a foundation that is at once flexible and immovable. His arco work on the slower pieces adds a classical gravity to the sound.

Motohiko Hino's drumming has adapted to the American context with striking speed: his playing here is looser and more responsive than on the Tokyo dates, shaped by the free-time sensibility of the post-Coltrane rhythm section tradition. The title track builds from a gentle opening to a full-ensemble climax that is among the most powerful moments in Hino's early discography.

The Berliner Jazztage invitation was a landmark moment for Hino and for Japanese jazz generally. European festival audiences in the early 1970s were hungry for new voices, and Hino delivered with a performance of ferocious intensity. The live recording captures a band playing at full stretch before an audience that clearly did not know what to expect and was won over completely.

The energy level is extraordinary from the opening bars. Hino's trumpet burns with a brightness and aggression that the studio records only hint at, his phrases tumbling over each other in long, breathless cascades. Motohiko Hino drives the rhythm with an insistence that borders on recklessness, his cymbal work a constant shimmer beneath the horns.

The extended improvisations push toward free territory without abandoning structure entirely, and the crowd response is audible and enthusiastic. This was the performance that opened European doors for Hino, leading to the Enja recordings and the international reputation that would follow. As a document of a musician meeting a crucial moment, it is irreplaceable.

Hino Story is a compilation drawn from Hino's Columbia and Canyon recordings, assembled to document his rapid development from the debut quartet through the electric experiments of 1969 and the exploratory Canyon sessions. As a survey of his first five years as a leader, it serves its purpose: the track selection moves chronologically and the arc of growth is unmistakable.

Hearing the early acoustic work alongside the plugged-in Hi-nology material and the free-leaning Canyon tracks in a single sitting makes the speed of Hino's evolution vivid. In 1967 he was a talented hard bop trumpeter; by 1970 he was playing music that had no easy category. The compilation format necessarily sacrifices the album-length coherence of the individual records, but as an introduction to the range of his early work, it is useful.

For collectors who already own the source albums, this is inessential. For newcomers, it offers a compressed overview of why Hino mattered so much to the Japanese jazz scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The sound quality is consistent, and the sequencing does justice to the chronological narrative.

Peace and Love is where Hino's American connections start reshaping the music. Reggie Workman, who had anchored Coltrane's quartet during the Africa/Brass sessions, brings a depth and spiritual weight to the bass lines that grounds the whole ensemble. Hideo Ichikawa's piano moves between modal vamps and free clusters, while Kiyoshi Sugimoto's guitar adds textural color that keeps the music from settling into any single groove for too long.

Hino's trumpet tone here is among the most beautiful he committed to tape in this period. The upper-register fire is still there, but the middle and lower registers have a warmth and fullness that suggest a player learning to let the instrument sing. Teruo Nakamura's percussion and Motohiko's drumming together create a rhythmic bed that is more polyrhythmic than anything on the earlier records, the influence of American free jazz audible in every bar.

The extended pieces have a meditative quality that rewards patience. This is not background music; it asks you to sit with it, to breathe with it, to follow its circling lines wherever they lead. The sextet format gives Hino more room than the quintet records, and he uses it well.

Billed as "Terumasa Hino Meets Reggie Workman," A Part deepens the collaboration begun on Peace and Love a month earlier. Workman's bass is the anchor again, and the addition of Takao Uematsu on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet gives the ensemble a darker timbral palette. Hideo Ichikawa moves between acoustic and electric piano, while Yuji Imamura's congas add a persistent rhythmic undertow.

The three sessions across November and December 1970 capture a band in transition. Kiyoshi Sugimoto's guitar floats between comping and textural abstraction, and Uematsu's bass clarinet work on the slower pieces gives the music a gravity the earlier quintet dates didn't have. Hino's trumpet is assertive but measured, choosing his spots carefully within the expanded ensemble.

The record sits slightly below the best of this period; the compositional material is less memorable than Peace and Love, and the longer pieces occasionally meander. But the interplay between Hino and Workman is consistently compelling, and the septet textures reward repeated listening.

Recorded in Germany with a pianoless quartet, Vibrations pairs Hino with German tenor saxophonist Heinz Sauer, a player rooted in the European free jazz tradition. The absence of a chordal instrument is the defining choice: with no piano to fill in the harmony, every note from both horn players carries more weight, and the interplay between trumpet and tenor becomes the architecture of the music itself.

Peter Warren's bass and Pierre Favre's drums form a rhythm section attuned to the European free music aesthetic, responsive and conversational rather than laying down a groove. Favre, one of the most important European free jazz drummers, brings a timbral sensitivity that is utterly different from what Motohiko Hino provided on the Japanese sessions. The result is a record that sounds like nothing else in Hino's catalog.

Sauer's tenor is grainier and more angular than any of Hino's Japanese front-line partners, and the contrast with Hino's burnished trumpet creates something neither musician could have produced in more familiar company. The cross-cultural chemistry is the story here, and when it clicks, the music reaches a raw intensity that the more polished Tokyo sessions rarely attempted.

Love Nature is the most American-sounding record Hino had made to this point, and the personnel explain why. Gary Bartz, fresh from Miles Davis's electric bands, brings an alto saxophone voice steeped in the post-Coltrane aesthetic: cutting, intense, and utterly committed. Reggie Workman returns on bass, and Eric Gravatt, another Miles Davis alumnus, replaces Motohiko Hino on drums. Recorded in Teaneck, New Jersey, this is a quintet of entirely different character from the Tokyo sessions.

The absence of Motohiko is the most striking change. Gravatt's drumming is heavier, more aggressive, rooted in the rhythmic language of On the Corner and Live-Evil. Kiyoshi Sugimoto's guitar is the only carryover from the Japanese sessions, and his playing adapts to the new context, becoming more angular and electric in its phrasing. The ecological theme suggested by the title gives the compositions a spacious, searching quality, but the improvisations are fierce.

Bartz and Hino make a formidable front line, their tones contrasting sharply: Bartz's alto sharp and insistent, Hino's trumpet warm but equally forceful. The rhythm section of Workman, Gravatt, and Sugimoto gives them a foundation that can shift from open modal space to dense polyrhythmic drive within a single bar. This is one of the essential Hino records.

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.

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. The title track is a buoyant, rhythmically complex piece that showcases the band at its most joyful. A pianoless quartet record of real ambition, and one that holds up 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. The Tokyo sessions bring Kohsuke Mine's tenor saxophone into the front line alongside Hino, 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 berimbau 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 and "Radio" are standouts, 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 marks Hino's return to a major Japanese label and a clear pivot toward commercial fusion. The production is polished, the arrangements layered with studio sheen, and the overall sound is more accessible than anything since Mas Que Nada. CBS/Sony wanted a crossover record, and Hino delivered one, his trumpet riding atop sleek, groove-oriented backing tracks that would not have been out of place on a contemporary R&B album.

The playing, as always, is excellent. Hino's tone is gorgeous, and his melodic sense ensures that even the most commercial tracks have moments of real beauty. The flugelhorn work on the slower pieces is particularly fine, with a warmth and richness that the studio production complements rather than obscures.

But the energy and risk-taking of the live recordings, the Enja sessions, and the Scofield-Carter-Williams dates is largely absent. This is music designed to please, and it does, but it does not challenge, surprise, or move in the way that the best Hino records do. Within the discography, Horizon serves as the closing bracket on a decade of extraordinary growth: from the Columbia debut to the New York fusion band, with stops at every point along the artistic spectrum. The horizon the title references was the 1980s, and Hino would meet them fully prepared.