Toshiyuki Miyama & The New Herd
Gallery
*2026 stock* Toshiyuki Miyama led The New Herd for decades, one of the most important and most adventurous Japanese big bands of the post-war period, and the working ensemble through which a remarkable number of Japanese composers and arrangers found a sympathetic home. Gallery shows the band in mature form, working through a programme that uses the full resources of the ensemble: brass-heavy passages giving way to chamber-sized features, dense ensemble writing setting up patches of open improvi…
Sunday Thing
*2026 stock* Another date from Toshiyuki Miyama's New Herd for Three Blind Mice, and a strong candidate for the band's most accessible single record. Sunday Thing leans into the warmer, more groove-conscious end of the New Herd's repertoire: there are still the harmonic ambitions and ensemble dynamics that made the band more than a swing-era throwback, but the rhythmic feel runs closer to the soul-jazz and groove-oriented big-band writing that was current at the time.
Long-form arrangements give…
Tsuchi No Ne (Sound of The Earth)
Japanese big-band jazz masterpiece. Amazing reissue from 2021. Pressed at RT.
Nio & Pigeon
"New Hard, led by Toshiyuki Miyama, is one of Japan's leading big bands. Since the release of their seminal work Perspective in 1969, they've opened up new horizons in big band jazz with their cutting-edge sound. This work, Niou to Hato, is one such representative work of the new hard movement, which reached its zenith in 1972. Bandleader Kozaburo Yamaki was then in charge of the entire composition and arrangement, and deeply pursued one of his long-standing themes: Japan, the nation in and of i…
The World Of Shuko Mizuno
"This is a live recording of "Shuko Mizuno's World Evening" on the fourth day of "5 Days In Jazz 1976", which made the genius Shuko Mizuno known to the world. The massive, fast-paced jazz-rock piece "Concentration" and "Jazz Orchestra '75 Part II" are breathtaking performances. Katsumi Watanabe's superb solo is also noteworthy!" - Koki Hanawa