Tohru Aizawa Quartet

The Tohru Aizawa Quartet was a group made up of Japanese student musicians  who never played a gig together and recorded only one album, Tachibana. The LP was recorded in 1975 and, until included on BBE’s recent J Jazz compilation, was unknown except to a small group of obsessive Japanese jazz collectors.

The Quartet was made up of four amateur musicians who were at university at the time. The recording session was financed by a local businessman, Ikujiroh Tachibana, who pressed up a few hundred vinyl 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.