Masabumi Kikuchi's family was pushed out of Tokyo after the 1945 firebombing, resettling in rural Aizuwakamatsu in Fukushima Prefecture. It was there, as a boy, that he found jazz, in secondhand records American soldiers had left behind: Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk. By the time he graduated from Tokyo Art College High School he was already playing professionally, and he soon joined Lionel Hampton's Japanese touring band.

Before he left Japan for a scholarship at Berklee College of Music, Kikuchi ran a quintet with trumpeter Terumasa Hino. Discogs confirms the pairing two separate ways: a 1969 release credited to the "Hino=Kikuchi Quintet," and a standalone artist entry for the "Terumasa Hino-Masabumi Kikuchi Quintet." It was an early partnership between two players who would each go on to build major careers of their own, and it wasn't their last: the two reunited decades later for the 2007 duo studio album "Edges," on Sony Records International.

The high point of Kikuchi's own 1970s output as a bandleader came on July 5, 1972, at Victor Studio in Tokyo, on Gil Evans's first visit to Japan. Evans let the 32-year-old Kikuchi lead a 21-piece Japanese orchestra through the session that became "Masabumi Kikuchi with Gil Evans," with Evans himself, tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, and trumpeter Marvin "Hannibal" Peterson playing inside the ensemble rather than leading it.

Kikuchi's catalog through the rest of the 1970s and into the early 1980s runs directly through this project's own scope: "Poo-Sun" (1970, named for his own nickname), "Susto" and "Gumbo" (both 1981), and "One-Way Traveller" (1982, CBS/Sony), an album critics have compared to Miles Davis's "On the Corner." It marked a real turning point. After "One-Way Traveller," Kikuchi turned away from fusion for good and moved back toward acoustic trio playing.

That shift led to Tethered Moon, the trio he co-led from 1990 with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Paul Motian. They met only intermittently over the next two decades, but the records they made together, from "First Meeting" (recorded 1990-91, released 1997 on Winter & Winter) through "Play Kurt Weill" (JMT, recorded 1994), "Chansons D'Edith Piaf" (Winter & Winter, 1999), and "Experiencing Tosca" (recorded December 2002, released 2004), are some of the most patient, unhurried interplay in his whole catalog. Kikuchi also worked as a sideman for Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones, and collaborated with composer Toru Takemitsu, whose "Complete Takemitsu Edition 3" credits him directly.

In his final years Kikuchi led a working trio with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Paul Motian, recording "Sunrise" for ECM. He passed away on July 6, 2015, in Manhasset, New York, at 75. His discography did not end there. His final studio sessions, recorded in December 2013 at Klavierhaus in New York, were released posthumously as "Hanamichi - The Final Studio Recording" in 2021, six years after his death, with a second volume following in 2025.

Kikuchi's own reference points went back to childhood: Ellington, Miles Davis, and Monk, discovered secondhand in postwar Fukushima. His recorded career ran an unusually wide arc for a single pianist, from the free-leaning post-bop of his early 1970s solo dates, through a genuine fusion period ("Susto," "Gumbo," "One-Way Traveller") that put him in direct conversation with Miles Davis's electric-era records, and back into the spare, unhurried acoustic trio language of Tethered Moon and his final ECM-era work. That range, and his willingness to abandon a successful format (fusion) once it had run its course, is what critics and collaborators most often point to when describing him.