Ayumi Ishito

Ayumi Ishito, a saxophonist, composer, and bandleader who originated in Japan and later settled in New York, has contributed her elegant tone and refined phrasing to projects led by Steve Dalachinsky, Gadadu, Daniel Carter, and additional artists. Her debut album View from the Little Cave appeared in 2016, coinciding with the Jazz Thieves collective's release of Brooklyn Elegy. Two years afterward she participated in Justifiable Homicide alongside Eighty-Pound Pug and Dalachinsky. Midnite Cinema, her second album, surfaced in 2019. The year 2021 brought both Ayumi Ishito & The Spacemen, Vol. 1 and Open Question, Vol. 1, the latter recorded with an improvisational quintet that includes saxophonist Carter. She co-founded the improvisational collective Playfield, whose two-part self-titled debut emerged that same year, followed by Stepping Out, Vol. 1 in 2022 and Magic Heart, Vol. 2 in 2023. Ayumi Ishito & The Spacemen, Vol. 2 also reached listeners in 2023. July 2024 saw the long-running quintet issue Wondercult Club on 577 Records.

Ishito entered the world in Ishikawa, Japan, in 1981. Piano instruction began at age four and continued through high school. At nineteen, while enrolled at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, she took up the tenor saxophone and joined the school's big band several months later. A scholarship in 2007 enabled three years of performance and composition study at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, under Joe Lovano and additional faculty members; she completed a master's degree in composition before relocating to New York City in 2010.

She integrated quickly into the New York scene, performing across multiple projects and forming her quintet in 2011. Membership in Leon Lacey's Freshly Orchestrated Orchestra followed, and she appeared with several Grammy-winning gospel artists including Kelly Price, Myron Butler, and Hezekiah Walker.

In 2015 she featured on John M.80FFLUXalachinsky with Eighty-Pound Pug and poet Steve Dalachinsky. The following year the saxophonist assembled Jazz Thieves alongside bassist John Gray and pianist Matt Robbins; drummers Tim Ford and Carter Bales together with guitarist Garrett Manley appeared as guests on the debut album Brooklyn Elegy.

During 2017, amid demanding performance schedules, Ishito recorded and self-released her initial solo album View from the Little Cave with her quintet, an effort that received laudatory international reviews. She also served as guest performer for The Charm Concert at Carnegie Hall with Chinese composer and pianist Don Liu. That year she joined Dalachinsky and doom metallers Eighty-Pound Pug for the long-form concept recording Justifiable Homicide. With her quintet she recorded and released the sophomore album Midnite Cinema in 2019.

Extensive road work and appearances at various East Coast clubs occupied the next several years. Early in 2021 she and The Spacemen, who perform on Theremin, synth, guitar, bass, saxophone, and voice, recorded and released Vol. 1. Joining Daniel Carter's Playfield group, a band that never plays indoors, produced the pair of live albums Stepping Out, Vol. 1 and Magic Heart, Vol. 2, while she also collaborated with Carter's quintet on Open Question, Vol. 1.

The subsequent year Ishito participated in Dave Soldier's and William Hooker's octet for The Lewitt Etudes, appeared on big band Gadadu's The Weatherman Is Wrong, and worked with Dutch-born, New York-based vocalist Vivienne Aerts on Typuthâng. Ayumi Ishito & The Spacemen, Vol. 2 likewise appeared then. In July 2024 she released her 577 Records debut Wondercult Club, leading her quintet that includes drummer Bales, bassist Yoshiki Yamada, and guitarists Hajime Yoshida and Yana Davydova. Self-produced, the album was recorded by Todd Carder at the Bunker Studio in Brooklyn and mastered by Kevin Blackler.