Tohru Aizawa Quartet Tachibana

The desire to discover and delve into new and unexplored areas of
music has turned attention on the Japanese jazz scene of the
1970s, often regarded as its gilded age. The recent groundbreaking
sell-out BBE compilation J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz
from Japan 1969-1984 threw much needed light on this
fascinating era and presented a range of artists and music that
surprised and delighted all who heard it. A key track on the
compilation was one of the rarest and least known: Dead Letter by
the Tohru Aizawa Quartet, taken from an album that was so
elusive, some pondered whether it even existed.
The album, Tachibana, was recored in 1975 and, until included
on the J Jazz compilation, was unknown except to a small group of
obsessive Japanese jazz collectors. The privately pressed record
was the only album made by the Quartet, four amateur musicians
who were university students at the time. The session was
financed by a local businessman, Ikujiroh Tachibana, who pressed
up a few hundred copies to use as a business card. In the
intervening 40 odd years since its recording, few copies have
surfaced, making it an in-demand yet elusive artefact from the
golden age of Japanese jazz. BBE Records are honoured to present
a fully authorised reissue of this holy grail, licensed directly from
the band themselves.
Tachibana has all the necessary components of a cult album:
pressed in small numbers, a few mysterious and vague details
about its origins, languishing in obscurity for decades and, above
all, superb musical craftsmanship and skill. It can now be enjoyed
by a new audience around the world.