Sadao Watanabe & His Group - Music Break

 

Year : 1969
Label : Nippon Columbia
Serie : Takt Jazz Series
Genre : Latin Jazz
Style : Bossa Nova

Recording of the live performance at Kosei-Nenkin Kaikan in Tokyo, Jul.4, 1967, spread over two discs of the "Takt Jazz Series", the first being the "Bossa Nova Concert". "Music Break" is making part of the japanese sixties phenomenon, the big Bossa Nova Boom, which was introduced by Sadao Watanabe and also contributed to do Brazilian Music, a popular music genre in Japan. Sadao (as, fl) plays with his regular rhythm section from 1966 to 1968, featuring Jazz legends pianist Masabumi Kikuchi & drummer Masahiko Togashi, guitarist Sadanori Nakamure, bassist Masanaga Harada, percussionist Hideo Miyata (on cabasa). Titles include the Bossa Nova classics like "Mas Que Nada", "Meditation", "Samba De Orfeu" and the jazz standard "It Might As Well Be Spring" played in samba mode.

Helen Merrill - Bossa Nova In Tokyo

Year : 1967
Label : Victor
Genre : Latin Jazz
Style : Bossa Nova

The third album recorded in Japan by Helen Merrill with the Sadao Watanabe Quintet featuring Masabumi Kikuchi (p), Isao Suzuki (b), Masahiko Togashi (ds),  Sadanori Nakamure (g) & Hideo Miyata (per), conducted and arranged Norio Maeda. Helen Merrill revisits the greatest hits of Bossa Nova among others, original compositions from the forerunner Antonio Carlos Jobim ("So Danço Samba", "How Insensitive", "Agua Di Beber"), just as some Japanese popular Pop songs ("Yume Wa Yoru Hiraku", "Shinjite Itai") & Jazz standards ("Fly Me To The Moon", "The Shadow Of Your Smile"). 

Yuji Ohno - The Boss & His Piano ~ Selected Works 1967 - 1975

Dedicated to the legendary japanese jazz pianist, "The Boss & His Piano" includes essential studio & live recordings by Yuji Ohno as a sideman and under his own name. Best known as composer of various background music for films and animation series, Yuji Ohno played alongside the greatest japanese jazz musicians among trumpeter Terumasa Hino, the drummers Masahiko Togashi & Hideo Shiraki or guitarist Ryo Kawasaki from Gil Evans Orchestra. From 1970 to 1975, his regular jazz trio consists of drummer Kazuyoshi Okayama and the bassists Yoshio Ikeda, Takashi Mizuhashi. During the seventies, he was an arranger in demand who regularly collaborated with various japanese jazz songstress such as Mieko Hirota, Martha Miyake, Kimiko Kasai, Hatsumi Shibata, the american Ann Young and brazilian Sonia Rosa. All tracks recorded between 1967-1975, featuring Terumasa Hino, Kimiko Kasai, Yuji Ohno, Sonia Rosa, Ann Young, Itaru Oki, Hiroshi Suzuki, Masahiko Togashi. Compiled & mixed by Be Hard Bop.

Hiroshi Suzuki=Masahiko Togashi Quintet - Variation

Year : 1969
Label : Nippon Columbia
Serie : Takt Jazz Series
Genre : Jazz
Style : Modal, Free Jazz, Avant-Garde

Essential jazz album among the influences of the future-jazz quartet Sleep Walker by trombonist Hiroshi Suzuki. "Variation" is a joint project including the legendary jazz drummer Masahiko Togashi featuring pianist Yuji Ohno, saxophonist Jun Suzuki and trumpeter Tetsuo Fushimi. Masahiko Togashi was a major figure alongside Masahiko Sato, Masayuki Takayanagi and Yosuke Yamashita in the blooming of free jazz in Japan in the late sixties whose "Variation" is one of the iconic masterpiece. Masahiko Togashi started in 1957, when he joined the Sadao Watanabe Quartet, which will bring him to play for various legends of Jazz as pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi, Helen Merrill, Masayuki Takayanagi, Yosuke Yamashita or Charlie Mariano and also in jazz big bands such as the famous Toshiyuki Miyama's New Herd. He recorded various free jazz sessions in 1969, with the Masahiko Sato Trio, several solo projects (the first "We Now Create"), and the same year, formed his best known quintet, the J.J. Spirits. Titles include "Castle Cats" selected in the  "Shibuya Jazz Classics - Sleep Walker Collection", compilation released in 2003.

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Sadao Watanabe Sextet - Bossa Nova '67

Year : 1967
Label : Victor
Genre : Latin Jazz
Style : Bossa Nova

"Bossa Nova '67" is the second bossa nova album recorded by the Sadao Watanabe Sextet featuring Sadao Watanabe (as, fl), Masabumi Kikuchi (p), Isao Suzuki (b), Masahiko Togashi (ds), Sadanori Nakamure (g) & Hideo Miyata (cabasa), supported by a strings ensemble. Sadao Watanabe is the most famous japanese jazz musician and was the main actor of the Bossa Nova boom in Japan from 1966 with the "Jazz & Bossa" album. The album consists of a collection bringing together all the big hits which made the fame of Bossa Nova from Antonio Carlos Jobim (The Girl From Ipanema, Meditation) to Luiz Bonfa (Black Orpheus) by Jorge Ben (Mas Que Nada), including also Jazz standards (Fly Me To the Moon, The Shadow Of Your Smile) and "A Man And A Woman" extracted from the musical score of the eponymus film composed by Francis Lai.