Tamaya Honda Explosive Session featuring Hiroshi Yoshino
本田珠也爆裂セッション feat. 吉野弘志
November 7, 2025
Au Bon Courage
Tamaya Honda本田珠也 – drums
Hiroshi Yoshino吉野弘志 – bass
Naoto Suzuki鈴木直人 – guitar
Ryo Tsuyama津山遼 – tenor sax
Takuma Ito 伊藤琢真 – alto sax
Kicking off with the classic “Fried Bananas” by Dexter Gordon got everyone into a ready mood. The mid-tempo classic tune opened ample room for powerful solos all around, a vibe that carried through both sets. If you start with such great solos, you know you’re in for a great evening of jazz.
Kicking into a tune by Stone Alliance reset the rhythms to Caribbean mode with everyone chasing that super-group’s brand of modern jazz. Suzuki’s guitar playing switched from tone to tone, all of them giving the song a great electric vibe. That set up a challenge to Tsuyama and Ito, the younger members of the group. They laid down thoughtful, engaging solos that seemed beyond their relatively youthful age. The band’s age range ran from their 20s to 70s, and the sax players were the youngest.
Each member brought their own selection of songs to the session. Charles Lloyd’s “Sweet Georgia Bright” featured a great exchange between tenor and alto. They maintained the high energy of the original, with solos that layered over each other, and a keen sense of exploration. The sweeping phrases still kept the tune tight and firm.
With such great sax players in front, it was inevitable that a Wayne Shorter song would crop up. “Oriental Folk Song” felt calm and stately. Suzuki opened up on guitar, moving between textures as easily as pressing a guitar pedal, but always the right one. His playing was both the smoothest and the wildest. Tsuyama and Ito, on sax, doled out solos with unrestrained energy, shaping them into something special.
“That’s All I Want from You,” covered by Nina Simone, was delivered “simply” as Honda, the leader, set up nimble drumming paired with Yoshino’s hearty bass lines. The “simple” setup gave Suzuki time to lay down rich chords that were far from simple, and the juxtaposition of the guitar and the two saxes created a unique and compelling texture.
Closing out with a rare track from Steven Grossman, recorded “Live at Someday” (the Tokyo jazz club), the lively upbeat groove again pitted the saxes against the guitar for a compelling tension. The solos opened up into long, exploratory lines and fierce drumming from Honda.
On the last tune, Yoshino finally took a full solo. Few bassists other than Yoshino could hold such centrifugal forces together, but when he finally soloed, the energy it took to keep the band together was still going strong. He had plenty of energy—and ideas—left at the end of the marathon of soloing.
Honda kept saying the evening was “just” a session. Yes, this was a session, but it felt like so much more. Although the musicians brought their own choice of tunes, their intimate exchanges made it seem as though they’d worked together on just these charts for a long time. The enthusiastic audience left knowing this evening was a rare chance to hear these stellar musicians show their true jazz selves.
