Jazz Articles about Sumi Tonooka

About Sumi Tonooka

Album Review

Alchemy Sound Project: Under the Surface

Read "Under the Surface" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
July 9, 2026

Formazione dall'identità mutevole, Alchemy Sound Project era già stata autrice di eccellenti lavori, tra i quali Further Explorations, uscito una decina di anni fa. Questa sua ultima fatica presenta tutta musica della pianista Sumi Tonooka, eseguita da un settetto o, in due brani, dal trio pianistico che ne costituisce il cuore. Ed è il trio ad aprire il lavoro, con il brano non casualmente intitolato “Point of Departure," dove la pianista è affiancata dal contrabbassista Gregg ...

Album Review

Alchemy Sound Project: Afrika Love

Read "Afrika Love" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
August 10, 2021

The group Alchemy Sound Project is the result of five accomplished composers and bandleaders pooling their resources. The five are saxophonists Salim Washington and Erica Lindsay, trumpeter Samantha Boshnack, pianist Sumi Tonooka and bassist David Arend. Each one contributes a composition to this, their third release together. The result is a varied set of complex and restless modern jazz, arranged to showcase the playing talents of the group's members. Arend's “The Fountain" is a jangling group collage which ...

Album Review

Alchemy Sound Project: Afrika Love

Read "Afrika Love" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
June 17, 2021

Confirming the many advantages of a regular working ensemble, the Alchemy Sound Project came together in 2014 to provide an additional venue of exploration for several members of the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute in Los Angeles. Although the group possesses an affinity for fusing classical composition techniques with expansive improvisation, what stands out on Afrika Love, the collective's third release, is its undisguised love of the jazz tradition. With a three-horn core of trumpeter Samantha Boshnack and multi-instrumentalists ...

Album Review

Sumi Tonooka: Now - Solo Live at the Howland Cultural Center

Read "Now - Solo Live at the Howland Cultural Center" reviewed by AAJ Italy Staff

by AAJ Italy Staff
September 27, 2012

Ascoltando Sumi Tonooka in questo intenso concerto in piano solo, ci si interroga per quali ragioni jazzisti di tale valore restino ampiamente sottovalutati e in gran parte sconosciuti. Sumi ha 56 anni ed ha già svolto quelle esperienze che potevano darle notorietà. Nata a Filadelfia, dopo aver studiato pianoforte con Margaret Chaloff (la madre di Serge) e poi con Mary Lou Williams ha debuttato su disco con Marcus Belgrave, collaborando poi con Sonny Fortune ed i fratelli Eubanks. Nel 1990 ...

Album Review

Sumi Tonooka: NOW: Solo Live at the Howland Cultural Center

Read "NOW: Solo Live at the Howland Cultural Center" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
July 16, 2012

There are some jazz players who suffer an unusually large gap between their credentials and their renown. Pianist Sumi Tonooka is a case in point. She studied with Mary Lou Williams, made her recording début with Detroit trumpeter Marcus Belgrave (of Motown/Tribe Records fame), and was part of Philly Joe Jones's band. Two especially strong albums--Long Ago Today (Artists Recording Collective, 2008) and Initiation (Artists Recording Collective, 2010, with saxophonist Erica Lindsay)--exhibited a distinctive Williams-like piano style, with strong original ...

Album Review

Sumi Tonooka: Now

by Dan McClenaghan
June 19, 2012

Sumi Tonooka is a resourceful jazz pianist who, along with alto saxophonist Chris Burnett and tenor saxophonist Erica Lindsay, started the Artists Recording Collective, offering up Initiation (2010), an excellent quartet outing which Tonooka co-led with Lindsay, and a more intimate Tonooka-led trio effort, Long Ago Today (2008). A former student of piano legend Mary Lou Williams and an alum of drummer Philly Joe Jones' band, the pianist knows how to work in an ensemble. But going it alone is ...

192

Album Review

Erica Lindsay / Sumi Tonooka: Initiation

Read "Initiation" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
June 15, 2010

Long Ago Today (Artists Recording Collective, 2008), pianist Sumi Tonooka's previous release, generated two immediate reactions. First, it seemed astonishing that so singular, strong and distinctive a player could have been flying beneath the radar for so long. Second, the rhythm section--Tonooka, bassist Rufus Reid and drummer Bob Braye--played with an unusual empathy that held the promise of ever-richer future collaborations; sadly, such hopes were dashed when Braye died in 2007, after Long Ago Today was recorded.For both ...