Windflower – Ayumi Tanaka

“Sparse, subtle and determined as much by silence as by sound, hers is a music created using deft, fleeting strokes” wrote the BBC Music Magazine of Ayumi Tanaka’s Subaqueous Silence. And Windflower reconfirms the potency of a musical approach in which intensity is conveyed through restraint and focus. This time, however, the music is for the most part collectively created, with all three players shaping the pieces in the moment.

Tanaka, the Wakayama-born and Oslo-based pianist, has collaborated with Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen for a decade already, in contexts including the band Time Is A Blind Guide and the Bayou trio with reed player and singer Marthe Lea. The association with US bassist Thomas Morgan is a new development. The three musicians found an immediate rapport on playing together for the first time at Oslo’s Nasjonal Jazz Scene Victoria in September 2024 and then, at producer Manfred Eicher’s suggestion, followed up with the recording of Windflower at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in May 2025.

The album, featuring eight luminous free ballads plus Ayumi’s composition “La Source”, is released on the eve of an international tour with concerts in Norway, France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland.