Eri Chichibu: Crossing Reality

Aug 09, 2024

Pianist and composer Eri Chichibu released her debut album Crossing Reality in 2022. On it, she includes eight of her fine-tuned compositions for combos ranging from duos and trios to five-, seven-, eight-, and nine-member ensembles.

The sound of Chichibu’s music fascinates with creative arrangements of harmonized horn lines, suspenseful rhythms, and multi-part musical sections. As the liner notes indicate, her songs shine with personality inspired by concepts and ideas that move her.

Three of the most striking songs feature Chichi’s large ensemble, a nine-member group with horn players plus guitar, piano, bass, and drums. This complex music develops through breakneck joyrides experienced as tales brimming with flourishes.

These nonets play on the thrilling and propulsive #1 “Crossing Reality”, the complex and dramatic #2 “The Sea - Seven Years Voyage -” (tinged with Chick Corea-ish fusion), and the deep and exploratory #5 “The Preconscious”.

The smaller combos show more of the poppy and splashy pianist side of Chichibu. Her trio of piano, bass, and drums plays on #3 “Kaeru”, some of the most playful music on the album, with fun vamps covered with catchy melodies with sprinkles of surprising notes and polymeters. On #7 “green and winds”, she pares the group down even further for similarly breezy sounds with an upbeat gallop.

In addition to nonet, duo, and trio formations, there are also songs for quintet and octet. #4 “Blackberry Winter” with a quintet is a soundtrack-like reflective piece with a beautiful flugelhorn sound, and #6 “dreams of the wind” features an octet for adventurous mystery infused with mild ambient textures.

The final track on the album, #8 “THE VENDING MACHINE - with DRINK music” is driven by a jamming septet delivering the poppiest hooks and beats on the album, perfectly matching its use as the theme music and video used by a vending machine company in her home region of Tohoku.

Liner Notes

(Translated from Eri Chichibu’s original Japanese liner notes.)

Hello. Thank you for getting my debut album Eri Chichibu’s Crossing Reality. Together with guests from New York (Remy Le Boeuf, Milena Casado), and the energetic Japanese musicians, engineer, and team, we poured our energies into making this album. I included a variety of arrangements of songs from the heart, for trios and large ensembles. I needed to put all of this on this one album.

The inspiration for several of the included songs comes from nature, psychology, and experiences. Upon a base of the acoustic sound, I tried to paint a little with an approach to sound design that is uniquely possible on recordings. I hope you enjoy traveling between universes of reality and fantasy while letting your imagination run wild.

With gratitude.

1. Crossing Reality

Was I awake or was I sleeping… It’s a song I wrote between the evening and the morning. Reality and fantasy, facts and dreams, memories and experience, chaos and release… It’s a scene where things that seem like opposites swirl around in the mind and become reality within each individual… you know?

2. The Sea - Seven Years Voyage -

In 2011, I experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake. It was horribly shocking. After that, I reached a turning point and my life changed 180 degrees to start a career in music. From this experience, I began to feel strongly that one never knows what will happen in life, and in 2018 I decided to write a song about life’s voyage. Since writing this song I’ve continued to have many encounters and experiences. I wonder what else the future holds…

3. Kaeru 2022

In the middle of a forest, there is a small pond with frogs, squirrels, and little creatures hopping around it playfully. Birds are flying, flowers are blooming, and leaves are swaying… I picture that sort of peaceful waterside setting.

4. Blackberry Winter (feat. Milena Casado)

Days of warm weather, then suddenly it’s cold, then it becomes warm again… This is a song I wrote while breathing in the air of nature and the city, as the season changed from winter to spring in Boston.

5. The Preconscious

Based on Freud’s psychoanalysis, the constructions of human consciousness can be described as an iceberg floating in the ocean. Within the large iceberg, the conscious mind resembles land above the water, while the vast subconscious is hidden beneath it. Between them just around the surface level seems to be the range of the preconscious, which normally doesn’t rise to consciousness but can be brought to memory and become conscious with or without some effort. Hmm… Suddenly remembering something lightly floating on the ocean’s surface, strong emotions may somehow well up from the subconscious… Perhaps?

6. dreams of the wind (feat. Remy Le Boeuf)

There was a day in Boston when the sky was tinted with orange, pink, and purple, and a light wind was blowing. Does the wind also admire the beauty of the sky? Does the wind dream? Was the wind going to meet someone? What if I were the wind? What if you were?

7. green and winds

I was going down the roads of my hometown in Tohoku. As always, it was a serene setting that spread out before me with green and winds. I just felt like going out and having fun.

8. THE VENDING MACHINE - with DRINK music

Japanese vending machines… cold drinks, hot drinks, put a coin in and it immediately comes out… it’s so great! (And it’s fun to press a button and have a can come falling down.) Today as well, I want to take a breath, take a break, and spend a great day.

(Music for Sun Vending Tohoku commercial)

Crossing Reality by Eri Chichibu

Eri Chichibu - piano, keyboard, extra instruments, composition
Kunihiro Kikuta - trumpet, flugelhorn (tr. #1, 2, 5, 6, 8)
David Negrete - alto sax, flute (tr. #1, 2, 5)
Akihiro Nishiguchi - tenor sax, alto sax, soprano sax (tr. #1, 2, 4, 5
Itsumi Komano - trombone (tr. #1, 2, 5)
Haruka Sasaki - baritone sax, bass clarinet, clarinet (tr. #1, 2, 3, 5)
Takahiro Nawashiro - guitar (tr. #1, 2, 5, 6)
Marty Holoubek - electric bass, acoustic bass (tr. #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Shun Ishiwaka - drums (tr. #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Milena Casado - flugelhorn (tr. #4)
Madoka Koike - violin (tr. #6)
Tamako Yashima - cello (tr. #6)
Remy Le Boeuf - alto sax (tr. #6)
Kan - percussion (tr. #7, 8)
Hiroki Hayashi - alto sax, tenor sax (tr. #8)
Jiro Suzuki - guitar (tr. #8)
Masaaki Saito - electric bass (tr. #8)
Yuta Fukuhara - drums (tr. #8)

Released in 2022 on ReBorn Wood as RBW-0024

Japanese names: Eri Chichibu 秩父英里 (Chichibu Eri) Kunihiro Kikuta 菊田邦裕 (Kikuta Kunihiro) David Negrete デイビッド・ネグレテ (Negrete David) Akihiro Nishiguchi 西口明宏 (Nishiguchi Akihiro) Itsumi Komano 駒野逸美 (Komano Itsumi) Haruka Sasaki 佐々木はるか (Sasaki Haruka) Takahiro Nawashiro 苗代尚寬 (Nawashiro Takahiro) Marty Holoubek マーティ・ホロベック (Holoubek Marty) Shun Ishiwaka 石若駿 (Ishiwaka Shun) Milena Casado ミレナ・カサード (Casado Milena) Madoka Koike 小池まどか (Koike Madoka) Tamako Yashima 八島珠子 (Yashima Tamako) Remy Le Boeuf レミー・ル・ブーフ (Le Boeuf Remy) Kan 日高歓 (Kan) Hiroki Hayashi 林宏樹 (Hayashi Hiroki) Jiro Suzuki 鈴木次郎 (Suzuki Jiro) Masaaki Saito 齋藤大陽 (Saito Masaaki) Yuta Fukuhara 福原雄太 (Fukuhara Yuta) Eri Chichibu: Crossing Reality 秩父英里「クロッシング・リアリティ」