Two piano trios, each led by an artist new to me, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto and Henry Hey, speak the same language, but in quite different dialects.

Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio
A Shade of Blue (evosound)
A review
I don’t know if anyone in this Japanese trio—75-year-old Tsuyoshi Yamamoto (piano), 61-year-old Hiroshi Kagawa (bass), and 79-year-old Toshio Osumi (drums)—speaks English, but they all definitely speak jazz, and they play it with a lively delight that belies their years. Their latest release, A Shade of Blue, offers sophisticated old-school jazz that reflects the pianist’s deep appreciation for the music of Erroll Garner, Wynton Kelly, and Red Garland, which is to say, they swing, and they revere melody. Two Yamamoto originals—the briskly swinging “Speed Ball Blues” and the slow-simmering “Midnight Sugar”—are joined by 10 standards and popular tunes. Yamamoto’s light and nimble touch graces every track, and as on “Speak Low,” he delivers a fresh idea for every chorus. There’s a romantic warmth in his playing. Listen to him caress the melody on an emotionally unguarded and nicely structured “The Way We Were” and unabashedly plunge into the romance of “Misty.” Finding his way through a thicket of block chords on “Like Someone in Love,” he finds just the right “ain’t life sweet” quality that the tune evokes (nice drum solo on this one).The highly empathic trio delivers a bracing statement of self-worth on Nina Simone’s “Black Is the Color” (nice bass solo on this one). They have fun, too, with playful endings and with the quote-splashed jaunt through “Bye Bye Blackbird.” A Shade of Blue offers a satisfying homage to the legacy of three jazz giants, delivered by three players with a profound feel for the music.

Henry Hey
trio: ri-metos (indie)
A review
American pianist/composer Henry Hey, who has worked with a host of impressive people, from Rod Stewart and David Bowie to Donnie McCaslin and Jeff “Tain” Watts, and composed everything from commercial jingles to movie scores, turns his attention to the piano trio format on trio: ri-metos,* with Joe Martin (bass) and Jochen Rueckert (drums). With a muscular approach, the trio deftly explores the harmonic possibilities in each of the 10 tracks, which include five originals from Hey, one each from Martin and Rueckert, two previously unrecorded compositions from Vince Mendoza, and one standard, “If I Should Lose You.” At turns ruminative, cerebral, emotional, the music reflects an astute architecture and a clear sense of direction, though listeners may not know what the intended destination is until they get there. Highlights include the opener, Hey’s “Season of the Thicket,” which works its way through a puzzle, a musical Rubik’s cube. At the end, Hey inverts the left- and right-hand assignments that he opened the tune with. On Reuckert’s bright “Weekly Benefits,” each member steps out on a lively solo. They offer up the chestnut “If I Should Lose You” ripe, roasted, and updated. Mendoza’s “Live by Love” struggles through suppressed feeling before reaching a clearing and coming to rest in the struggle. Hey’s deliberate and transparent “The Gardener (for Jane H.)” ends the album on a tender note, the solo piano touching on a classical feel. Adventurous and intelligent, trio: ri-metos delivers a contemporary statement, played with feeling and fun.

* In his press release, Hey offers this fascinating explanation for the album’s title:
The Marshall Islands, situated in the eastern Pacific Ocean, are separated by many miles of open sea. As such, navigating purely by line of sight is impossible. As early as 2000 BC, Micronesian inhabitants developed a miraculous method of navigation by observing the direction, reflection, and refraction of ocean waves. With this system, they could determine where other islands would lie and where the ocean depths would change, even with no land in sight. They would then create what became known as stick charts, such as the one pictured on the cover of this recording, as a document of the observed wave patterns. A wave pilot, or Ri-Meto, might train for several years to master this craft and then would pass this skill on to an apprentice from the next generation. As a sailor, the tale of the Ri-Metos has always fascinated me, but as an artist and human living in what some might call ‘strange times’, these formidable sea voyagers have taken on a deeper significance. We move forward to create art that is meaningful to us, and to trust in our passion and joy to lead us onward.

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