Ryo Fukui - My Favorite Tune (1994) (Full Album)

We Release Jazz is very happy to announce the official reissue of Ryo Fukui’s only solo piano album, recorded live, June 4-5, 1994 at The Lutheran Hall in Sapporo. Sourced from the original masters, this intimate offering from the Japanese jazz legend is available on limited edition 180 gram vinyl mastered at half speed for full audiophile sound, as well as on digipack CD. Both formats come with liner notes by Yusuke Ogawa.

Originally released on CD only by Sapporo Jazz Create in 1994, My Favorite Tune is a beautiful bop adventure which includes two superb compositions that Ryo Fukui wrote as an homage to his beloved Hokkaido region, the fan-favorite “Nord” and “Voyage”, a tribute to his mentor Barry Harris ("Nobody’s"), alternate versions of his mega classics “Scenery” and “Mellow Dream”, and, last but not least, bewitching takes on timeless gems by Sonny Clark and Avery Parrish.

My Favorite Tune plays like a cool summer night, full of contemplative notes and deep feelings, with Ryo Fukui baring his heart on the piano and displaying the soulful sophistication he is loved for. A true masterpiece completing his amazing discography.

[Horsemam]

On two consecutive nights in June of 1994, Fukui, one of the great jazz pianists of the 20th century, performed at Lutheran Hall in Sapporo, Hokkaido. The recording became an album called My Favorite Tune. But it quickly went out of print. Copies disappeared. Soon the album simply didn’t exist any more. Vanished in the wind.

It was lost for nearly twenty years. But My Favorite Tune is an album that seems to have predicted its own ephemeral nature, with self-conscious longing–each track seems to lament the passing of the previous. It’s easy to imagine a long, cool summer night in Sapporo, a middle-aged Fukui, moustache, goatee and large metal glasses, on a grand piano, tinkling mournfully away as the night and times grow darker.

There is only a piano. Fukui is silent and there is no hint of an audience. An album that has gone missing for so long can’t help but to generate a mystique for the contemporary listener. Listening to an album gone for so long can sound like the ghost of Fukui plays the piano in a dream bubble, a white cloud alone in a neverending sky, part of a different world.

The album features eight tracks that rush from the charming and delightful to the mournful, to sophisticated contemplation, to breathless excitement and bluesy groaning and jazz standard jump and a final song that is truly the sound of the words “goodbye.” You’ll want to smile and skip, you’ll want to bend over and cry, you’ll want to wag your hat and scream–it’s one piano album absolutely chock full of emotion and spirit, not to mention technical skill.

I can’t imagine being an audience member at the concert. As the years go by I realize that night is missing from the Earth, and the music lives only in my fading memory. It becomes a burden, a mission, a duty to keep the memory alive. But keeping a memory alive for twenty years takes sheer force of will; for something as fleeting as music, it might take even more than that, maybe even magic.

And as if by a magic spell, the album’s back. My Favorite Tune’s vanishing-and-reappearing act feels especially fit for the beginning of a difficult economic period in Japan’s history, but the nature of disappearance and reemergence is timeless. In our own lives we inevitably encounter the shadows of our own pasts. Sometimes they delight us and sometimes they pain us. From now on, whenever I encounter my past in a shadow or a cloud, I will always here the skitter, laughter, and regret of Fukui’s “Voyage” and My Favorite Tune.

The album was found in 2017 through Fukui’s widow, Yasuko, and swiftly uploaded to the Internet.

[stevegreg]

That cover choice creates great dissonance, bravo.

[Horsemam]

Tracks

1. Voyage 00:01
2. Scenery 03:31
3. Mellow Dream 07:26
4. Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen 17:36
5. Nobody's 23:13.
6. My Conception 26:52
7. After Hours 30:42

[jimtakahashi]

A weird combo of highly appreciable music with a highly negligible jacket.

[ElazarY]

Should’ve kept the original Fukui cover 😂

[mjaxdes]

good stuff.. I never saw the older cover so I don't care.

[cassandrajoiner]

Couldn't have chosen better cover art? Great music though.