Michiko Yoshino

Live at the Roppongi Pit Inn October 5, 2002

Michiko Yoshino--vocals
Toshiyuki Daitoku--piano
Keiji Takeda--bass
Toshiaki Matsumoto--harmonica
Kei Hirai--drums 

Michiko Yoshino’s voice has a pure, honest quality to it that lingers in your mind. Her approach to singing is to strip away all pretension and let her voice emanate from deep inside. She avoids over-decorating her voice, letting it come through naturally. Although it was the first night for her to play with several new members in her backing band, the group played together comfortably. Her long-time piano accompanist Daitoku is a marvel, and Yoshino had to pick well to find other members up to his standard.

Takeda on bass had a full, round tone that boomed through the songs without overwhelming them. Hirai’s drumming had the right balance of laid-back traditional meter and lively complicated patterns. Matsumoto’s harmonica playing mixed well with Yoshino’s voice. Both have an unforced, natural range that may not be wide, but is used fully and thoughtfully.

The upbeat tunes worked well, of course, but spiced in between were touches of blues, modal variations, and a beautiful Antonio Carlos Jobim song, “Falando de Amor” sung in Brazilian Portuguese. The classics “Afro-Blue,” “My Favorite Things” and “Night in Tunisia” gave the band a chance to really open up and take off.

But Yoshino followed along with her own scatting, one of her most appealing features. She’s perhaps an instrumentalist at heart, and the richness of her voice came through especially nicely on these scatted vocals. Perhaps in consideration of the crowd, she stayed with many standards, including only one tune of her own, “Elegy (A Ray of Moon)” which was haunting and introspective, relying on her vocalics without words at all. Yoshino and the band worked through bluesy numbers with a sense of fun and a loose beat.

Hopefully, Yoshino will keep working with this same group in the future. It’ll be interesting to hear more from them as they develop their group sense of interaction and individuality. Her next project is to cover more Brazilian tunes, which, if the one Brazilian song is any indication, will be well worth hearing more of.