For those unaware, “Sparse, subtle and determined as much by silence as by sound, hers is a music created using deft, fleeting strokes” wrote the BBC Music Magazine of Ayumi Tanaka’s Subaqueous Silence.

And the new album Windflower (released via ECM Records on August 21st, 2026) reconfirms the potency of a musical approach in which intensity is conveyed through restraint and focus.

This time, however, the music is for the most part collectively created, with all three players shaping the pieces in the moment. Tanaka, the Wakayama-born and Oslo-based pianist, has collaborated with Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen for a decade already, in contexts including the band Time Is A Blind Guide and the Bayou trio with reed player and singer Marthe Lea.

The association with US bassist Thomas Morgan is a new development. The three musicians found an immediate rapport on playing together for the first time at Oslo’s Nasjonal Jazz Scene Victoria in September 2024 and then, at producer Manfred Eicher’s suggestion, followed up with the recording of Windflower at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in May 2025.

The album, featuring eight luminous free ballads plus Ayumi’s composition “La Source”, is released on the eve of an international tour with concerts in Norway, France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland.

1. Windflower [04:44]
2. La Source [05:55]
3. From Us, To You [04:43]
4. Tree of Stars [05:10]
5. Weaving [03:41]
6. The Sea Is Still [02:36]
7. Spring [04:20]
8. Driftwood [06:04]
9. The Dissolving Sun [02:41]

With this Tanaka/Morgan/Strønen trio having only played together for the first time at Oslo’s Nasjonal Jazz Scene Victoria in September 2024, the accomplished trio open their new recording on the serenely beautiful titular Windflower and then bring us the sheer elegance of grandeur within La Source, the more strident fare of From Us, To You and the decadent gossamer of Tree of Stars.

Along next is the delicately hued Weaving and the frenetically flourishing The Sea Is Still which is in turn backed seamlessly by the astute, rhythmically engaging Spring, the furtively sculpted Driftwood helps to round the set out, itself coming to a close on the dulcet ambiance of the alluring The Dissolving Sun.

www.ayumitanakamusic.com

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