OH thank you so very much!

ooh yeah! very cool. thanks.

After recording three albums in the early ’00s with Brazilian musicians Jaques and Paula Morelenbaum, Japanese pianist and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto rejoins Jaques (on cello) and violinist Judy Kang for Three, a beautiful set of trio music. The songs selected for this project are ones which will mostly be familiar to his longtime fans, but not these intimate arrangements for his trio. There are movie themes, both ones he is famous for (Merry Xmas, Mr Lawrence & The Last Emperor) and more recent works (Death of a Samurai). There are also pieces from his solo albums, many of which he re-released on his ’09 retrospective for solo piano, Playing The Piano. The new trio arrangements of those songs, such as “Still Life in A” and “Nostalgia,” are richer without losing the intimacy of the earlier recordings. That “presence” is enhanced by the excellent recording quality here, which makes you feel like you’re sitting right in the room with the trio. The songs are uniformly gorgeous, although Mr. Sakamoto isn’t afraid to throw in a hint of discordance from time to time, as in the final section of “Bibo no Aozora.”

The packaging of the Three CD is also noteworthy, at least the Avex edition I bought. The CD booklet multi-folds around the outside of the digipak, something I had not seen before, at least not in this fashion. Included are multiple photos of the artists.

Granda album Obrigado