Jazz Articles about Masabumi Kikuchi

About Masabumi Kikuchi

Album Review

Masabumi Kikuchi: Hanamichi--The Final Studio Recording Vol. II

Read "Hanamichi--The Final Studio Recording Vol. II" reviewed by Vincenzo Roggero

by Vincenzo Roggero
February 9, 2026

Quattro brani ascoltati, studiati e poi suonati alla fine degli anni Cinquanta ancora studente di musica a Tokyo, tre improvvisazioni la più lunga delle quali con i quasi dodici minuti è anche l'esecuzione di maggior durata dell'intero album. È questo il contenuto di Hanamichi. The Final Studio Recording Vol. II che insieme ad Hanamichi album pubblicato nel 2021 ma registrato nella medesima sessione del dicembre 2013, due anni prima della sua scomparsa -si palesa come una sorta di testamento musicale ...

Album Review

Masabumi Kikuchi: Hanamichi--The Final Studio Recording Vol. II

Read "Hanamichi--The Final Studio Recording Vol. II" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
November 22, 2025

Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi (1939 -2015) enjoyed a decent profile via his albums under his own name--30-plus discs--and from his work with drummer Paul Motian and bassist Gary Peacock in his Tethered Moon group. But he deserved more. He was an original who worked in an inspired--if somewhat quirky--journeyman fashion until he bloomed in his late career with a pair of excellent albums on the ECM Records label--Sunrise (2009), a trio outing with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Paul Motian; ...

Interview

Producer Sun Chung: Always Listening for a Story

by Tyran Grillo
December 19, 2022

On April 28, 2021, a quiet masterpiece marked the end of an era--and the beginning of another. Hanamichi was to be the last studio recording of Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, who died in 2015, two years after its creation. And yet, while its sweeter overtones struck balance in the bitterness of his absence, the album marked the birth of Red Hook Records, an independent label run by producer Sun Chung. Kikuchi's uncanny ability to tell a story was an organic ...

Album Review

Masabumi Kikuchi: Hanamichi — The Final Studio Recording

Read "Hanamichi — The Final Studio Recording" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
May 24, 2021

Esce postumo, a inaugurare l'etichetta Red Hook, questo album in solitudine del grande pianista giapponese Masabumi Kikuchi, che molti ricorderanno per le collaborazioni con Gary Peacock (epica quella del 1971, Voices) e Paul Motian, su tutte il formidabile e geniale trio Tethered Moon. Registrato nel 2013, due anni prima della sua scomparsa, il lavoro vede il pianista—allora settantatreenne e già fortemente sofferente e debilitato—misurarsi con uno Steinway su cinque brani: un'improvvisazione, delle quali era maestro, una sua composizione e tre ...

Multiple Reviews

Solo Pianists from Japan

by Jerome Wilson
April 21, 2021

These are two recent solo piano releases from Japanese players. One is the latest dispatch from a prolific musician. The other is a farewell statement from a deceased artist. Satoko Fujii Hazuki Libra 2021 Satoko Fujii has been amazingly prolific in the last few years, releasing a bevy of recordings in all sort of configurations, from solo piano and duets with her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, to various small groups and ...

Album Review

Masabumi Kikuchi: Hanamichi The Final Studio Recording

Read "Hanamichi The Final Studio Recording" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
April 6, 2021

Masabumi Kikuchi is not the kind of jazz pianist who just strikes the keys to produce a sound. He has a Zen-like approach to the instrument by making it an extension of himself, and thus both constructs and hears the music produced as a different form factor. There are and were other contemporary pianists such as Bill Evans, Denny Zeitlin and the late Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould, musicians who perhaps may fit into this category, but Kikuchi was a ...

Album Review

Masabumi Kikuchi: Black Orpheus

Read "Black Orpheus" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 30, 2016

Black Orpheus, the solo piano CD from Japanese-born pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, may be the starkest, loneliest music in the world. Masabumi Kikuchi (1939-2015) was a versatile, if ultimately idiosyncratic artist. Early in his career he worked with a panoply of mainstream music makers, everyone from drummer Elvin Jones, to producer arranger Gil Evans, tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson and pianist/composer Mal Waldron. But he proved--from 1990 on--too individualistic, a musician with no technique (or so he said), who never ...