Evergreen

LA / Seattle trumpeter Jun Iida celebrates his Japanese heritage on a couple of tunes, including Akatombo, a song from his childhood sung in Japanese by Audrey Johnson. Nicholas Mondello wrote on AllAboutJazz, "Iida's trumpet delivers a lush, mellow tone. His improvisations are thoughtfully presented, surprisingly inventive, and highly inflected with ornamentations both classic jazz and Japanese... He swings in a style which is totally unique. Johnson's voice is a gymnastic feast; her unison scatting is dead-on pitch, and adds shimmer to accompanying horn lines... Evergreen is a texturally-varied debut album from Iida and his exceptional musicians. It is colorful and, at times, enchanting, stimulating both ear and mind."