Breathe
Miki Yamanaka
Released on August 14, 2026 through Cellar Live, Breathe is a nine-track contemporary-jazz album by Japanese-born, New York-based pianist and composer Miki Yamanaka. Running just under 52 minutes, it is built largely from Yamanaka originals and presents her as both a rhythmically alert pianist and a composer capable of giving traditional small-group jazz fresh melodic and structural turns. The album’s title suggests its prevailing balance of openness and motion: the music is intricate and energetic without feeling crowded, drawing on hard bop, post-bop, soul jazz, and modern-jazz language in equal measure.
Yamanaka leads a quartet with saxophonist Nicole Glover, bassist Tyrone Allen, and drummer Jimmy Macbride, with the group’s responsiveness central to the record’s appeal. “Indigo” opens with shifting, buoyant rhythms; “Wolfe,” a contrafact named for bassist Ben Wolfe, evokes the angular, percussive interplay of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Rouse; and “James Williams” uses a bright jazz-waltz feel. The groove-centered “Dancing Cats,” written by organist Akiko Tsuruga, is the album’s lone non-Yamanaka composition, while “Tucson” and “Pre School” explore more involved rhythmic and harmonic changes. A trio reading of the earlier composition “Dandelion Puff” provides a change of texture, and the playful closer “Delayed Flight,” which incorporates whistling and an airport gate announcement, turns an everyday inconvenience into a compact piece of musical humor.
Breathe
Miki Yamanaka
Released on August 14, 2026 through Cellar Live, Breathe is a nine-track contemporary-jazz album by Japanese-born, New York-based pianist and composer Miki Yamanaka. Running just under 52 minutes, it is built largely from Yamanaka originals and presents her as both a rhythmically alert pianist and a composer capable of giving traditional small-group jazz fresh melodic and structural turns. The album’s title suggests its prevailing balance of openness and motion: the music is intricate and energetic without feeling crowded, drawing on hard bop, post-bop, soul jazz, and modern-jazz language in equal measure.
Yamanaka leads a quartet with saxophonist Nicole Glover, bassist Tyrone Allen, and drummer Jimmy Macbride, with the group’s responsiveness central to the record’s appeal. “Indigo” opens with shifting, buoyant rhythms; “Wolfe,” a contrafact named for bassist Ben Wolfe, evokes the angular, percussive interplay of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Rouse; and “James Williams” uses a bright jazz-waltz feel. The groove-centered “Dancing Cats,” written by organist Akiko Tsuruga, is the album’s lone non-Yamanaka composition, while “Tucson” and “Pre School” explore more involved rhythmic and harmonic changes. A trio reading of the earlier composition “Dandelion Puff” provides a change of texture, and the playful closer “Delayed Flight,” which incorporates whistling and an airport gate announcement, turns an everyday inconvenience into a compact piece of musical humor.