Terumasa Hino Quintet

*2026 stock* A live document from one of the towering figures in Japanese jazz history. By the early seventies Terumasa Hino had established himself as Japan's most internationally fluent trumpeter, a player whose vocabulary moved easily between Lee Morgan-era hard bop, Miles-influenced modal abstraction, and the harder edges of Coltrane-era extended playing. Live! catches his quintet in concert, working through original material at the high temperature his groups were known for: long forms, fierce solos, and the kind of group elasticity that comes only from a band playing together night after night.

Hino's tone is the centre of the record (bright, declarative, with that particular cutting edge that makes him instantly recognisable), and the rhythm section gives him exactly the platform he needs, pushing without crowding. The recording sits squarely in the period when Japanese players were no longer just absorbing the American canon but adding to it, and Hino was probably the most visible representative of that shift. One of the essential live entries on Three Blind Mice, and one of the records in the catalogue that has been most consistently chased by collectors. Reissued in the Three Blind Mice Supreme Collection 1500.