After three days of rest, I had my first concert with pianist Shunichi Yanagi. To my delight, my tenor player Yuki Nakae also joined us on stage and played some tunes. After the concert, I met up with my bass player Satoshi Tokuda, who had traveled from Nagoya and would be staying with me at a hotel in the Asakusa area for the rest of the trip.
The first full line-up performance was held at Studio Wuu in Kashiwa, one of my favorite venues. Along with Gaku Hasegawa on drums and Yuki Nakae on tenor saxophone, the quintet was complete. The following day, we had a concert without drums and finished our time in Tokyo with a quintet performance at Salt Peanuts in Ekoda. After the show, Satoshi and I took a late-night drive to Nagoya, a journey that took about six hours. The next day, I spent some leisure time with Satoshi visiting some of Nagoya’s best ramen shops.
The last concert was held at Jazz Inn Lovely in Nagoya and featured a trumpet lineup. Yuuki Hirate joined us on trumpet and flugelhorn for this final show before joining us in the studio for the next two days.
