Ayumi Tanaka, Thomas Morgan, Thomas Strønen: Windflower

Ayumi Tanaka's Windflower uses Nordic jazz's musical vocabulary against an ancient Japanese landscape, creating depth and beauty by the space left empty.

Tanaka is a Japanese pianist and composer for whom Norwegian jazz feels "very personal," explaining how it "made the air feel alive." She was determined to figure out how. She moved to Norway in 2011 and earned a master's degree from the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo. She augmented her studies by improvising "together with the sounds of birds, winds, trees, and water."

Windflower fuses the Nordic jazz that enchanted her with classical Japanese music. The trio is a true chamber ensemble, each contributing critical elements to the whole as co-leaders.

The album opens ominously with the title song, distant drums depicting a storm threatening the fragile beauty of a windflower clinging to tundra. In "La Source," Thomas Strønen's trip-on-the-carpet rhythms mix with Thomas Morgan's rich bass and Tanaka's languid phrases. "From Us, To You" shuffles, stops, and starts like someone trying to say something important but too nervous to come to the point. "Tree Of Stars" is serene and meditative, evoking the Tanabata, (Japanese Star Festival), in which wishes are written on paper (tanzaku) and hung in trees.

In "Weaving," Morgan's bass and Tanaka's piano play a short musical figure and take it in different directions. In "The Sea Is Still," Tanaka's piano conjures bubbling water against a flowing stream, portrayed by Strønen's brushes. "Driftwood" features Morgan's lyrical tones amidst a chattering piano. Windflower closes with "The Dissolving Sun," a soundtrack to sunset, a shuffling hi-hat fading into darkness.

It is impossible to determine which songs on Windflower are improvised or composed, which seems to be the point. Tanaka said, "I want to compose music which sounds like an improvisation and to improvise music that sounds like it has been written."

Ayumi Tanaka has found her voice in Nordic jazz's spare intensity, inflected with the profundity of classical Japanese music. She travelled 5000 miles to "make the air feel alive," eventually rediscovering the ancient music of home.