Week 9 - Scenery - Ryo Fukui - The perfect first step into Japanese Jazz

A 3 am find and a long time favourite of mine, this album was my Youtube algorithm at its finest. This album is stellar. Completely self taught, this is Fukui’s first album as he gives his own spin to jazz standards. A trio of simple instruments but no simple sounds; Fukui bringing his own flair and complexity of musical ideas which left me speechless on first listen. The drums and bass accompaniments do a great job to highlight Fukui’s virtuosity on the piano. His ability to evoke emotion is unparalleled taking you, the listener, from laid back to frantic, melancholic to joyous, without ever speaking a single word. The album opened a whole new world of jazz to me as I began to explore the post war influence of the US on music in Japan. This was the album that opened the doors for me to Japanese jazz.

A near perfect album across the board, my recommendation is to listen to it in its entirety. But, for those looking for stand out tracks, I suggest

1. It Could Happen To You - Laid back, smooth and widely palatable, this is both the perfect opening for Fukui’s debut album but also the perfect note to begin a deep dive down a musical rabbit hole. Fukui and his trio bring sharpness to the song when compared to the Miles Davis version it was adapted from.
   

2. Early Summer - The longest track on the album it is where Fukui takes the opportunity to show off both his technical chops on the piano but also the harmony within the trio. Staying in the pocket of the song, the track’s near 11 minute run time passes by surprisingly fast, never feeling too long in the tooth.
   

3. Scenery - In an album of mostly adaptations, Fukui ends the album with a self written piece proving that he is not just a fantastic pianist but can also compose music at the same level as both his contemporaries and his inspirations. A fitting end to the album, Fukui plays a sombre melody, one which I can compare only to Miles Davis’s Blue in Green, firmly cementing his place (at least for me) alongside the greats like Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner (of the Coltrane Quartet)