Chie Ayado meets Nobuo Hara and His Sharps & Flats – My Way (2010) [SACD / East House Records – EHSA-1005]
Title: Chie Ayado meets Nobuo Hara and His Sharps & Flats – My Way (2010)
Genre: Jazz
Format: SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC
Japanese unique music band, Nobuo Hara, Sharps & Flats, and a rare jazz singer who repainted the history of Japanese jazz over the past 10 years. Chie Ayado meets saxophonist Nobuo Hara and His Sharps & Flats for this recording of 13 standards. The No.1 “For Once In My Life” with special big band arrangement is sure to become a hot topic. Only Chie Ayado can sing George Gershwin’s famous song “Swanee” so expressively. A surprisingly performance!
As this is the case with many international stars, Chie Ayado is not a household name in America. In her native Japan, she’s a superstar jazz performer with tens of millions recordings sold. She’s so in demand, she continues to play over forty large-venue concerts a year. Her label, EWE, is making a name for itself with Three Blind Mice-style analog recordings of unbelievable accuracy and dimension. Vocals are listening-room immediate and the piano is detailed, full and beautifully balanced. Very little processing is used, so you hear Ayado’s unique vocal and piano playing without all the sonic distractions hiding many modern digital recordings. Nobuo Tsukahara, better known as Nobuo Hara is a Japanese jazz saxophonist and bandleader. Hara played in a military band during World War II and in a Tokyo officer’s club after the war. He took leadership of the ensemble Sharps and Flats in 1952, which he would lead until the 1980s. This band recorded copiously and appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival. Sharps and Flats accompanied Chiemi Eri and included sidemen such as Norio Maeda, Shotaro Moriyasu, and Akitoshi Igarashi.
