Sunao Wada Quintet
Four Scenes
*2026 stock* A later Sunao Wada session for Three Blind Mice, and one of the more outward-looking records in his TBM run. The quintet-plus-one format brings the saxophonist and flautist Minoru Ikeno alongside Wada's working group, and the addition shifts the music's centre of gravity, opening up the writing to longer tones and more spacious harmonies. There's still plenty of the bluesy swing that runs through Wada's discography, but the textures here are wider: Fender Rhodes lacing through the h…
Blues World
*2026 stock* An earlier Sunao Wada outing on Three Blind Mice, recorded with both quartet and quintet formations across the programme, and built (as the title suggests) around the blues. But this is blues in the broader, more searching sense the seventies were beginning to articulate: harmonic frames borrowed from soul and modal jazz alongside the standard 12-bar architecture, and an improvising attitude that's more interested in development than display.
Wada's guitar carries the writing with t…