Originally released in 1975 on the legendary Three Blind Mice label, Toki is the first album by Japanese saxophonist Hidefumi Toki. On alto and soprano, he is joined by a remarkable quartet featuring Kazumi Watanabe on guitar, Nobuyoshi Ino on bass, and Steve Jackson on drums. Between the incandescent soprano on “Lullaby for the Girl,” the melancholic alto on “Darkness,” and a superb reinterpretation of Ornette Coleman’s “Blues,” the album already reveals all of Toki’s personality, both as an instrumentalist and as a composer. A session that is at once intense, melodic, and deeply expressive, it has become a classic of 1970s Japanese jazz. This SACD Hybrid reissue, remastered by Bernie Grundman, is part of the prestigious Three Blind Mice Premium Reissue Collection.