Collection: Sinsuke Fujieda Group

Sinsuke Fujieda grew up in Mito, Ibaraki, formed his group in Tokyo in 2009, and spent fifteen years developing a modal and spiritual jazz practice rooted in his own compositions before the world found him all at once. "Fukushima" (Superfly/SoFa Records, 2025), recorded live in Tokyo in 2023 with a sextet featuring Fumiko Takeshita on violin alongside piano, bass, drums and percussion, was pressed in a limited first edition of 1,000 copies on 180g Japanese vinyl and went to number one on the Juno Records Jazz Chart. By 2026, cumulative pressings had reached 9,000 copies, a remarkable figure for a debut release on an independent Japanese jazz label. The music sits in the modal and spiritual jazz lineage that runs from McCoy Tyner and Alice Coltrane through the great Japanese jazz recordings of the 1970s: Tyner-influenced piano voicings, searching saxophone over an open rhythmic framework, and Takeshita's violin adding a textural element that distinguishes the group's sound from most of its reference points. Fujieda composes all five pieces on "Fukushima," and the album's title carries weight specific to Japan: the prefecture and city whose name became global shorthand for nuclear catastrophe in 2011, reclaimed here as a place of origin and remembrance rather than disaster. The group performed at Fuji Rock Festival in 2025. "INFORMEL" (SoFa Records, October 2026), a double LP reimagining a 2020 Tokyo live performance, is their most recent release.