Ysla Yumi Ito

• 1 Is It You 05:05
• 2 Love Is Here to Stay 06:13
• 3 Lonely Island 03:58
• 4 Rebirth 06:57
• 5 Dramaqueen 03:11
• 6 After the End 04:26
• 7 Seagual 04:50
• Total Runtime 34:40

Info for Ysla

What a voice: when Yumi Ito sings, deep emotions are involved, the Swiss with Japanese-Polish roots moves somnambulistically through the pitches, she brings out shades and nuances as one has heard from few jazz singers so far. Not only does she know how to sing a melody in such a way that it sticks in your memory forever - she also improvises in a way that cannot be forgotten.

In doing so, she uses an enormous spectrum and shows many facets of her personality: sometimes she sings lines that simply go to the heart, that warm the soul, sometimes it becomes more abysmal, for example when she lapses into the noisy and mutates into a mega with witch-like outbursts.

One of Yumi Ito's great strengths is her feeling for multi-layered, almost enchanted atmospheric images. She already showed this with the large cast of her celebrated album Stardust Crystals and now also on her new work Ysla, which has pop appeal at times and on which she accompanies herself on piano and synths, flanked by Polish bassist Kuba Dworak and Spanish drummer Iago Fernández.

Yumi Ito, vocals, piano, synthesizer
Kuba Dworak, double bass
Iago Fernández, drums

Yumi Ito
(1990) is a Japanese-Polish singer, songwriter, producer and arranger based in Basel, Switzerland.

Her music is an amalgam of jazz, art-pop and neo-classical. Yumi performs extensively live and has shared the stage with artists such as Al Jarreau, Becca Stevens, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Mark Turner.

As a bandleader, side-woman and arranger, Yumi Ito works in jazz, pop, theater and film. In addition to her numerous collaborations, Ito has recorded three albums under her own name: "Intertwined" (2016, Unit Records), "Ypsilon" with Yves Theiler (2017), and "Stardust Crystals" (2020, Unit Records). Ito performs internationally under her name with bassist Kuba Dworak and drummer Iago Fernandez, her eleven-piece Yumi Ito Orchestra, and with Polish guitarist Szymon Mika.

In 2015, Ito graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Jazz Vocal Performance from the Zurich University of the Arts. In 2017, she received her Master's degree in Jazz Vocal Performance and Composition at the Jazzcampus in Basel. Her teachers were Guillermo Klein, Mark Turner, Jorge Rossy, Larry Grenadier, Lisette Spinnler and Jeff Ballard. In 2017, Ito was selected by Wolfgang Muthspiel to participate in the prestigious Focus Year Band program and was part of the international eight-piece ensemble for a full year. The band recorded the album "After This" (2018, Neuklang) and received weekly training from musicians such as Dave Holland, Avishai Cohen, Django Bates, Steve Swallow and Lionel Loueke. The group performed at Opus Jazz Club Budapest, Porgy and Bess Vienna, Off Beat Festival, etc.

As part of a composition residency, Yumi Ito was invited to East Iceland twice (in August 2018 and June 2019) to work on music for her current projects. She is a prize winner of the Montreux Jazz Vocal Competition (2015) and became a member of the winning band of the festival generation Frauenfeld (summer 2017) under the direction of trombonist and composer Adrian Mears. In 2016, she was invited by Yaron Herman to the 50th Montreux Jazz Festival to perform her own compositions with Ziv Ravitz and Joe Martin.

In the summer of 2013, during a two-month residency in New York, Ito studied with Gretchen Parlato, Bob Stoloff, Jay Clayton and Bobby McFerrin.

Booklet for Ysla