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WWSLP 088LP
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Wewantsounds announces the reissue of Fumio Itabashi's highly sought-after album Watarase, hailed as one of the great Japanese jazz albums and featuring Itabashi on solo piano playing an inspired mix of standards and originals. Recorded in 1981 for Denon and released in Japan the following year, the album has since reached cult status among international jazz connoisseurs, thanks to Itabashi's inventive piano playing and to its cult title track, a superb lyrical spiritual composition. Newly remastered by Nippon Columbia using their ORT mastering technology, the album reissue features original artwork including a two-page insert with a new introduction by Paul Bowler. Born in 1949 in Tochigi, Fumio Itabashi studied piano at the renowned Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo, where Joe Hisaishi also studied. After finishing his studies, he quickly began recording as a session player for Japanese heavyweights such as Sadao Watanabe (making his recording debut on Watanabe's 1972 self-titled album), Terumasa Hino, and Kohsuke Mine before recording his first album as a leader -- accompanied by his trio -- with the album Toh released by Frasco Record in 1976. In October 1981, Itabashi entered Nippon Columbia's Studio 1 to digitally record a new album using Denon's PCM digital recorder as a follow up to Nature. The album, called Watarase was cut in just two days and feature Itabashi on solo piano, playing a couple of standards ("Someday My Prince Will Come" and "I Can't Get Started") and four originals plus "Msunduza," a Dollar Brand composition from 1975. The album highlights the pianist's dazzling technique oscillating between energetic passages as on "Msunduza" and more serene ones as heard on "Someday My Prince Will Come." The high point of the album is undoubtedly its title track, "Watarase" which has become a favorite on the international jazz scene over the years. Paul Bowler, in the liner notes, draws comparisons between Itabashi's and Pharoah Sanders' playing, noting that they both "possess a similar open-hearted blend of spiritualism, passionate intensity and melodic beauty." Watarase was never widely available outside of Japan (with only a limited edition in 2018). Wewantsounds is therefore delighted to bring this classic back in circulation, newly remastered in Tokyo by Nippon Columbia for all Japanese jazz lovers to enjoy.
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MUSIQ 218LP
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Is Watarase the best jazz record from Japan, as the French-born Gilles Peterson once assumed? Or is it maybe the best jazz record of all jazz records? Everyone can decide for themselves and listen to Watarase, the second solo piano album of the Japanese pianist Fumio Itabashi, originally released in 1982. Tokyo-based Mule Musiq have unearthed it, re-mastered the original recordings and brought it back to the world in order to seduce all music lovers that embrace notes which come straight from the heart and soul. Any sensible listener finds the instrumental piano pieces are somehow soulfully connected to what Keith Jarrett plays on his legendary Köln Concert (1975). Like Jarrett, Itabashi does not play his notes academically. He lets them fly, gives them some kind a life of their own, hits the piano keys deeply emotionally and injects his into compositions and interpretations a kind of nervous human soul. In terms of style, some call his Watarase recordings post-bop, others contemporary jazz. It is all, however, just that kind of agitating jazz that melts spirituality with humanity. Three tunes, the epic "Someday My Prince Will Come" as well as "Msunduza" and "I Can't Get Started", are interpretations, respectively, of compositions by Frank Churchill, Dollar Brand, and Vernon Duke. The other four compositions were written and by Itabashi, who started to play the piano when he was eight years old. While studying at Tokyo-based Kunitachi College Of Music, he fell in love with jazz. In the 1970's, he worked with such musicians like trumpet player Terumasa Hino, drummer Takeo Moriyama, and saxophonist Sadao Watanabe. Today Itabashi is still a vital part of Japanese jazz culture as a performer and composer. Those who want to see how he makes love with his piano should check the Internet for the French documentary Jazzed Out (2010), that captured his unique way of playing in one episode. But as music is always firstly for the ears, and not the eyes, one had to be directed to play the Watarase recordings loud, to get hooked by the highly infectious piano gems that have been recorded at Nippon Columbia 1st studio in Tokyo on 12th and 13th of October 1981. They will force one to become a good friend with the repeat button, in whatever medium one chooses to surrender to the music of Fumio Itabashi.
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MUSIQ 223LP
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Mule Musiq present the first vinyl reissue of Fumio Itabashi's Nature, originally released in 1979. The legendary Japanese jazz pianist's first solo record ever, Nature was recorded at Nippon Columbia's first studio in Tokyo from March 13-15 in the year of its release. It features Itabashi making feverish love with the piano and he shares the studio with the great bass players Hideaki Mochizuki and Koichi Yamazaki, drummers Kenichi Kameyama and Ryojiro Furusawa, soprano saxophonist Yoshio Otomo, and vibraphone wizard Hiroshi Hatsuyama. They all joined him to perform his very own songs, composed by Itabashi himself and produced by Ryonosuke Honmura, who also produced Japanese jazz heroes, like saxophonist Keizo Inoue, during his career. Nature is fresh, propulsive, twitchy, and melodious from the first to the last tone. Sometimes the instrumentalists play a classic solo in an overall deep modal jazz atmosphere that seems to be made for cats that love the good old stars and inventors -- from John Coltrane to Miles Davis, from Thelonious Monk to Art Blakey. Nature also shows how deep Itabashi studied the history of the genre, while keeping his very own vision of jazz alive. The man that made his professional debut as a member of the Sadao Watanabe Quintet in 1971 and who was also a member of the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine world tour from 1985-1987, plays the piano in all tempos, from a nervous high-flying quickness to a deep blues-style slow. Besides the traditional jazz flavors, you get a feeling of mind-expanding spiritual jazz, that grand masters like Pharaoh Sanders or Gary Bartz, turned into a sacred music genre. A master-class record in ravishing big city jazz music, adventurous, sometimes meditative, sometimes faster than the speed of light, always grooving with a bright, pure-toned sensibility and deeply soulful melodic imaginations. It extends the jazz history with a fine balance between tradition and innovation. And it stays infectious all the time while sounding surprisingly fresh due to a lot of thrilling musical spontaneity that touches profoundly even though all notes have been written down by Itabashi before he and his combatants entered the studio. And maybe that's the mystery of these timeless five at times epic recordings: all notes written on paper, but each musician had the freedom to dance with them in his very own unique way.
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