Ryo Fukui

Ryo Fukui (1948-2016) was born in Biratori, a small town in Hokkaido, and spent most of his life in the northern city of Sapporo, far from the jazz capitals of Tokyo and New York. He came to the piano late and by an unusual route: he took up the accordion at eighteen and did not begin teaching himself piano until he was twenty-two. What he lacked in formal training he made up for in patient listening, working through the recordings of Bud Powell and other bebop pianists until their language became his own.

In 1976 he recorded Scenery, a trio session captured at Yamaha Hall in Sapporo. The playing is clean and unhurried, bebop lines tempered by a lyrical touch, and its reading of the standard Willow Weep for Me has become the album's calling card. Mellow Dream followed in 1977. Neither record made much noise at the time, but decades later they found a second life online, and Scenery in particular is now treasured as a cornerstone of Japanese jazz.

Fukui stayed close to home. In 1995 he opened a jazz club in Sapporo called Slowboat, where he played and taught until his death in 2016. His touch rewards close study: slow one of his solos down and the voicings and inner phrasing come clear, ready to work through slowly in practice mode.