Kunihiko Sugano (菅野邦彦) is a Tokyo pianist whose reputation rests on a run of live trio and solo records made in the 1970s, many of them captured by his own brother, the audio engineer Okihiko Sugano. Okihiko, an audio critic who passed away in 2018, founded the Audio Lab label in 1971, and a good part of Kunihiko's discography exists because of it. The sound of those records is part of the story: Sugano turns up on equipment-maker demonstration discs from Diatone in 1973 and 1978 through Accuphase in 2011 and DALI in 2024.

Japanese biographical accounts say he studied at Gakushuin University and began playing professionally while a student, in the band of Jun Yoshiya, then spent about a year in a salaried job before committing to music. Around 1960, those accounts continue, he formed a trio with the bassist Isao Suzuki and the drummer George Otsuka, and the visiting American clarinetist Tony Scott took the trio on as a unit. The same rhythm section is said to have become the Hidehiko Matsumoto Quartet in 1963 and 1964. What the record credits confirm is how long those relationships lasted: Sugano, Suzuki and Otsuka were still together on Hidehiko Matsumoto's Four Wings, recorded at Onkio Haus in Tokyo on October 23, 1979, and Matsumoto, Suzuki and Sugano were also the front of the George Kawaguchi Big Four album George and Sleepy, recorded on September 30, 1969.

His own first leader record was Finger Popping, a trio date for Columbia recorded on July 29 and 30, 1968 with Yoshio Ikeda on bass and Hiroshi Yamazaki on drums. Four years later came Mr. Heartache (1972), pressed privately in an edition of 200 numbered copies, with Eizou Honda on bass, Yoshitaka Uematsu on drums, a Bösendorfer piano noted on the credits, and Okihiko Sugano supervising and mixing. Only 200 numbered copies were made.

The years from 1973 to 1977 are where the catalogue concentrates. Blow Up, recorded for Three Blind Mice on March 29 and 30, 1973 and issued under Isao Suzuki's name, has Sugano on piano and Fender piano with Suzuki, Takashi Mizuhashi on bass and Otsuka on drums. Music: The World of Kunihiko Sugano (August 9, 1973, Iino Hall) put Suzuki on cello; Collaboration: Kunihiko Meets Eiji paired him with the clarinetist Eiji Kitamura; Portrait (March 7, 1974, Aoyama Tower Hall) and Portrait II were solo piano; Concert Tour in Kyushu was a live trio set recorded in January 1975, and Everything Happens to Me a trio date with congas. For Audio Lab he also recorded with the alto saxophonist Hiroshi Okazaki (Extension) and the tenor saxophonist Konosuke Saijo (Incarnation).

Love Is a Many Splendored Thing is the record his name travels on. Three Blind Mice recorded it live at Toshi Center Hall in Tokyo on March 22, 1974, with Yoichi Kobayashi on bass, Teruhiko Takada on drums and Yoichi Ogawa on congas, which is why the sleeve reads Trio +1. It is four tracks, and the last of them, "Perdido," runs 18 minutes and 35 seconds. Three Blind Mice used him again as a guest on other leaders' dates: Suzuki's Blue City (March 4, 1974), with guitarist Kazumi Watanabe and drummer Tetsujiro Obara; Orang-Utan (April 4, 1975), where he plays piano and Fender organ; and Touch (November 1975), again with Watanabe and Obara.

Through 1975 and 1976 he kept recording live, in the clubs and halls where Japanese jazz was heard: On a Clear Day at Van99 Hall in Tokyo (June 18, 1975); The Days of Wine and Roses with Suzuki on bass (November 10, 1975); Date in Date, recorded at the Date Royal in Hokkaido on July 18, 1976 with Osamu Kawakami on bass and Hiroshi Murakami on drums; Shiny Stockings with the alto saxophonist Hideyuki Kikuchi (March 28, 1976); a record with strings, The Shadow of Your Smile (July 21, 1976); and a solo date at Toho Seimei Hall on December 14, 1976, issued as Solo.

Opa! Brasil was recorded in Brazil and Tokyo in 1978, with Sugano on piano, electric piano and melodica, a bassist and drummer, and five percussionists, and he produced it himself. The same year, Manhattan Focus (Electric Bird, 1979) was recorded at Sound Ideas Studio in New York, a band with Tom Harrell on flugelhorn, Bob Berg on tenor saxophone, Al Foster on drums, Yoshiaki Masuo on guitar and Sammy Figueroa on percussion. Foster was also the drummer on Parky Morning (Victor, 1979) by the Midnight Diggers, recorded on February 7, 1979, where Sugano shares the keyboards with Hajime Ohno.

The 1980s are a mix of duo and trio records. Sincerely Yours (January 28, 1980, King Records Studio 2) is a duo with Suzuki on piccolo bass, both men adding Solina string synthesizer. Foo Fou Fool (February 28, 1981) is a trio with Suzuki and the drummer Motohiko Hino, issued by Atlantic. Hullo Again was recorded live at the Ginza club 69 on May 6 and 7, 1981, with Satoshi Kosugi on bass and Jo Jones Jr. on drums, and Live Life (1981) is another live trio set with Jo Jones Jr., with Kunimitsu Inaba on bass. Starlight Souvenir (1982) is solo piano. In September 1983 he recorded the sessions that were not released until 1990 as Estate, with Leroy Vinnegar on bass, Jimmy Ponder on guitar, Harry Whitaker on electric piano and Bruno Carr on drums. Japanese accounts say he gave a farewell concert at Ginza Swing in May 1989 before leaving for Spain.

Rediscovery came from abroad and from the hi-fi world. "Midnight Sun Never Set," from Opa! Brasil, was chosen for Gilles Peterson's Shibuya Jazz Classics (Solid, 2003); Sugano's piano is on "Vietnam," included on BBE's J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz From Japan 1969-1983 (Volume 2) in 2019; and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing has since been reissued on remastered 180 gram vinyl.

In 2003 he reunited with Suzuki, Otsuka and Tsuyoshi Yamamoto for Blow Up 2 (JazzFine, July 2003), the XRCD sequel to the 1973 record. He is still playing: his own website lists regular evening performances at the Shimoda View Hotel on the Izu Peninsula through 2025 and a dinner-and-music date there in March 2026, concerts in Shanghai in May 2025, and a Tokyo-area series with the drummer Yutaka Sasaki, including a December 2024 date at the club Natural in Musashino with the saxophonist Kohsuke Mine. Much of that recent work has been on an instrument he developed himself, a piano with a flat keyboard in which there is no distinction between white and black keys; the schedule gives its concert debut as the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing in July 2023, followed by an unveiling performance at Shimoda that December.

Sugano plays mainstream and post-bop piano with a strong blues feeling, and the records show it more than any description does. Even his standards sets lean on the blues, and three of his track titles name pianists: "Garner's Blues" (for Erroll Garner), "Blues for H. Hawes" (for Hampton Hawes) and "Blues for Wynton Kelly" (for Wynton Kelly). The repertoire is the standard songbook ("Autumn Leaves," "Misty," "Summertime," "Black Orpheus," "Autumn in New York"), played long, with tracks of eight to eighteen minutes common on the live records.

The choice of format matters as much as the repertoire. He is heard in three main settings: the solo piano of the Audio Lab Portrait records and Solo, the trio with congas that gives the Three Blind Mice and Audio Lab dates their loose, percussive pulse, and the duo with Isao Suzuki on Sincerely Yours. He adds electric colors without changing his touch: Fender piano on Blow Up and Orang-Utan, melodica and electric piano on Opa! Brasil, Solina strings on Sincerely Yours.

Opa! Brasil is the clearest departure from the Tokyo trio sound, and its "Midnight Sun Never Set" is the track Gilles Peterson picked for Shibuya Jazz Classics. Japanese accounts describe him as an exacting, sensitive player who disliked large concert halls and was particular about the piano under his hands, which fits a discography built around small rooms and carefully engineered live sessions.