Three Nights Taped at Blue Note Tokyo, Shelved for Four Years, Then Issued Under the Drummer’s Name

On September 22, 1997, Toshiko Akiyoshi opened a three-night stand at Blue Note Tokyo with Yoshio Suzuki on bass and Motohiko Hino on drums — a homecoming for a pianist who left for Berklee in 1956 and never moved back. Nippon Crown taped all three nights, sat on them for four years, and issued the result on September 21, 2001 as Live at Blue Note Tokyo ’97, sold in Japan under a longer title billing the group as a “Japanese Trio” featuring Motohiko Hino. Hino had died of pancreatic cancer in May 1999, aged 53: the album is named for a man who never heard it come out. The “Japanese” framing is its own dry joke — Suzuki had held the bass chair in Stan Getz’s group and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and Hino had worked out of New York since 1978. Tower Records dates the sessions to October 1997; jazzdisco.org and Wikipedia both give September 22–24, used here.