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Venus Audio Grade Selection Vol. 3: Yasukuni Terashima’s Journey into the Heart of the Piano Trio

The first notes arrive without ceremony. A piano establishes the melody, an acoustic bass gives the music its weight, and a drummer begins shaping the space around them. There are only three musicians, yet the listening room suddenly appears larger, deeper and more alive.

This is the world of Venus Audio Grade Selection Vol. 3: Venus Piano Trio Collection by Yasukuni Terashima, an audiophile jazz compilation devoted entirely to one of the most revealing and enduring formats in jazz. Selected by Japanese jazz critic Yasukuni Terashima from the extensive Venus Records catalogue, the album brings together ten performances in which the piano trio becomes both a musical conversation and a demanding test of high-fidelity sound. (Phile Web)

Released by Venus Records on May 27, 2026, the collection appeared as a stereo hybrid SACD under catalogue number VHGD-10028. Its high-resolution digital edition presents the music in 24-bit/96kHz sound and runs for 58 minutes and 47 seconds. The programme contains ten tracks by ten different piano trios, creating a compact but remarkably varied portrait of the form. (OTOTOY / オトトイ)

The piano trio may appear simple on paper. Piano, bass and drums have been at the centre of jazz for generations, and their roles seem immediately understandable. The pianist carries melody and harmony, the bassist provides movement and foundation, and the drummer controls momentum and colour. Yet the format offers nowhere to hide. Without horns, strings or large arrangements filling the space, every touch becomes exposed. The weight of a piano chord, the vibration of a bass string and the fading shimmer of a cymbal can determine whether a recording feels alive or merely correct.

That vulnerability makes the piano trio ideal territory for Terashima. His selection does not treat audiophile sound as an exhibition of technical effects. Instead, it asks the listener to hear how recording quality changes the emotional force of music. Stereo imaging, tonal balance, dynamic range and low-level detail matter because they bring the personalities of the musicians closer. The equipment serves the performance, not the other way around.

The album begins with “Charade” by the Massimo Faraò Trio. Henry Mancini’s melody enters with the elegance of a film scene in which appearances cannot entirely be trusted. The composition carries romance, suspense and a faint sense of danger, qualities that make it especially suitable for Faraò’s direct and richly textured piano style.

The opening track immediately establishes the physical character associated with many Venus Records productions. The piano stands firmly at the centre, the bass possesses genuine body, and the drums provide more than background timekeeping. Each instrument arrives with clear definition, yet the trio remains united. Through a capable audio system, the listener should hear not three separate demonstrations but three musicians responding to one another in real time.

“Charade” also introduces one of the central ideas running through Venus Piano Trio Collection: familiarity can be a form of freedom. A well-known melody gives the listener a stable point of reference. Because the tune is recognizable, attention can move toward touch, timing and interpretation. Faraò does not need to dismantle the composition to make it personal. He allows its cinematic character to remain visible while giving the rhythm section enough space to transform it into living jazz.

Jon Davis follows with “So in Love,” presented here in a remixed version. Cole Porter’s composition has always balanced devotion with emotional unease. Its melody rises with romantic confidence, but the harmony suggests that love may be less secure than the words claim.

The Jon Davis Trio approaches that tension through control rather than melodrama. The piano line moves with precision, while bass and drums maintain a framework that feels both supportive and alert. A good recording reveals the changing pressure behind the pianist’s touch. Some notes are allowed to bloom; others are placed sharply, altering the emotional temperature without disturbing the flow.

For audiophile listeners, “So in Love” is a test of tonal integration. The piano must sound clear without becoming metallic, and the bass must remain full without covering the lower register of the keyboard. Cymbals should possess air and extension, but their brightness should never detach them from the rest of the trio. When the balance is right, technical detail becomes almost invisible. What remains is movement, tension and a familiar song being reconsidered from inside.

The Eddie Higgins Trio changes the atmosphere with “La Cubana Caliente,” also presented in a remixed version. The title promises heat, and the performance delivers it through rhythm rather than volume. Higgins, one of the pianists most closely associated with the Venus Records catalogue, had a gift for making sophistication feel natural. His playing could be elegant without sounding formal and accessible without becoming predictable.

Here, the trio turns toward Latin-inflected motion. The piano dances around the rhythmic pattern, the bass keeps the performance grounded, and the drums add layers of percussion and momentum. The music tests an audio system’s ability to reproduce speed without losing weight. If the bass becomes slow or indistinct, the performance loses its lift. If the upper frequencies are too aggressive, the rhythmic excitement turns into fatigue.

At its best, “La Cubana Caliente” feels effortless. The musicians appear to lean into the rhythm together, producing the kind of forward movement that cannot be explained by tempo alone. The track reminds the listener that pace is not simply how quickly notes are played. It is the shared internal timing that makes an ensemble breathe as one body.

The Roma Trio then offers “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” in a 2026 remastered version. The song carries the grand emotional language of mid-century cinema, but the trio reduces that scale to something more private. Without an orchestra surrounding the melody, every phrase becomes exposed.

The Roma Trio finds warmth without sentimentality. The pianist respects the song’s romantic identity while avoiding excessive decoration. The bass adds depth and a quiet melodic presence, and the drummer works with restraint, understanding that the spaces around the melody are as important as the notes themselves.

This performance reveals how an audiophile recording can change the apparent size of music. The arrangement is intimate, but the soundstage need not feel small. A high-quality playback system should reproduce the piano with convincing dimensions while allowing air to remain around the instruments. The room becomes part of the performance, not through exaggerated reverberation but through the natural decay that follows each phrase.

The album moves northward with “Midnight in Moscow” by the Vladimir Shafranov Trio. Shafranov’s work has often combined melodic clarity with a deeply swinging rhythmic sense, and this performance contains both qualities. The title suggests dark streets, distant lights and a city continuing to move after the day has ended.

Shafranov avoids turning the composition into a piece of musical tourism. The melody is treated as material for jazz, not as a decorative reference to Russia. His piano carries the tune forward with confidence, while bass and drums maintain a supple pulse underneath it.

“Midnight in Moscow” is one of the collection’s most effective demonstrations of dynamic cooperation. The trio can move from delicacy to firmness without breaking the musical line. On a revealing system, small changes in intensity should be clearly audible. The listener should sense the musicians pushing and releasing the rhythm rather than hearing a performance held at one constant level.

The album’s fifth track also marks a transition. The first half has travelled through cinema, Cole Porter, Latin rhythm and romantic song. With Shafranov, the collection begins to feel more nocturnal. The lights are lower, the spaces seem wider, and the piano becomes less a narrator than a traveller moving through the night.

Danilo Rea continues that journey with “Reginella,” a song deeply connected to the Neapolitan tradition. In Rea’s hands, it becomes a meeting between Italian memory and contemporary jazz language. The melody is allowed to sing, but it is never preserved behind glass. Rea approaches it as something that can still change.

The performance begins with lyricism, yet the trio’s interaction prevents it from becoming static. Bass and drums listen closely to the piano, adjusting their weight and movement as the interpretation develops. Rea’s touch can be delicate, but it is never vague. Every phrase has direction.

“Reginella” is especially revealing in the middle register, where piano tone can easily become congested. A balanced system should preserve the density of the instrument without blurring its individual lines. The bass must remain distinct below it, and the drummer’s subtler gestures should emerge without being pushed artificially forward.

Emotionally, the track is one of the album’s most human moments. It carries nostalgia, but not nostalgia as a desire to return to an unchanged past. Instead, the music acknowledges that memory is constantly rewritten by the present. Rea does not merely perform an old song; he allows the song to remember itself differently.

“Amapola” by John Di Martino’s Romantic Jazz Trio brings another famous melody into the Venus Records sound. The song has travelled through popular music, Latin repertoire, film and jazz, accumulating associations along the way. Di Martino’s trio does not attempt to erase that history. It uses familiarity as a source of intimacy.

The melody unfolds with graceful patience. Di Martino’s piano remains expressive without becoming overfilled, while the rhythm section creates a soft but steady sense of motion. The performance has the atmosphere of a late-night request played for the final listeners remaining in a club.

The word “romantic” in the trio’s name is not merely a marketing description. It points toward an approach in which melody remains central, emotional communication is treated seriously, and beauty is not regarded with suspicion. Yet the playing avoids easy sweetness. Harmonic details and rhythmic choices keep the interpretation alive.

For listeners evaluating a high-end audio system, “Amapola” is a useful test of intimacy. The instruments should feel close, but not unnaturally enlarged. The piano should retain body at quiet levels, and the bass should remain articulate even when played softly. The recording succeeds when the listener begins leaning toward the music rather than turning up the volume.

The Steve Kuhn Trio then enters with Frédéric Chopin’s “Nocturne in E-Flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2.” It is one of the most recognizable works in the classical piano repertoire, and its appearance places the jazz piano trio in direct conversation with nineteenth-century Romanticism.

Kuhn does not treat Chopin as raw material for a clever transformation. He respects the melodic architecture while allowing the trio to open new spaces around it. The familiar nocturne becomes less formal, more conversational and more exposed to the possibility of change.

The recording places extraordinary demands on piano reproduction. Chopin’s melody requires a singing upper register, while the accompaniment must remain fluid and controlled. If the playback system hardens the treble, the performance loses tenderness. If the lower register becomes too warm, the structure turns cloudy. The ideal presentation preserves both the piano’s physical mechanism and its poetic illusion.

Bass and drums enter the classical landscape without disturbing it. Their role is not to announce that the music has become jazz but to expand its sense of time. The nocturne begins to breathe differently. Its phrases are no longer fixed within a solo performance; they become invitations to response.

Kenny Barron’s “Beautiful Love,” heard in a remixed version, follows with quiet authority. Barron has long represented a form of jazz mastery in which complexity never needs to advertise itself. His playing can be harmonically sophisticated and rhythmically subtle while remaining immediately inviting.

“Beautiful Love” is an ideal vehicle for that balance. The standard carries a shadow beneath its elegance, and Barron allows both qualities to remain present. His lines move with apparent ease, but every note feels considered. The rhythm section supports him without simply following, creating a three-way conversation in which leadership changes almost invisibly.

The track is particularly revealing of transient response. Barron’s touch requires the piano attack to be reproduced cleanly, but the sound must not stop at the initial strike. The harmonic body and decay are equally important. The bass should have texture, not just depth, while the drums must communicate subtle differences between stick, brush, cymbal and skin.

When everything aligns, “Beautiful Love” demonstrates why high-resolution jazz recordings can be so compelling. More detail does not make the music colder. It reveals the warmth hidden inside precision.

The final performance is “Summer Night” by the Richie Beirach Trio. Its position at the end of the digital and SACD programme gives the album a reflective conclusion. Summer is often represented in music as brightness and movement, but this is a summer night: slower, darker and touched by the awareness that the season will not last.

Beirach’s harmonic language gives the piece an unsettled beauty. The piano does not simply state a melody and decorate it. Chords shift the emotional ground beneath the listener, while the bass and drums respond with sensitivity. The trio creates an atmosphere that feels spacious but never empty.

The track rewards close listening at moderate volume. The smallest piano details matter, as do the fading edges of the cymbals and the resonance surrounding the bass. Silence becomes an active element. Each pause seems to hold the memory of the phrase that preceded it.

Ending with “Summer Night” is an inspired choice because it avoids a dramatic final statement. The album closes by gradually withdrawing. After nine performances that explore romance, rhythm, nostalgia, classical influence and melodic reinvention, Beirach leaves the listener in a more ambiguous place. The music does not resolve everything. It simply allows the night to continue beyond the final note.

The SACD and high-resolution digital editions present the ten tracks in the order beginning with “Charade” and ending with “Summer Night.” A limited 180-gram double-vinyl edition, announced as part of the Venus Masterpiece LP Collection, reorganizes the programme across four sides. The vinyl configuration opens with “Charade” and “Midnight in Moscow,” while “Beautiful Love” and the Chopin nocturne form its final side. The Japanese pressing is presented in a gatefold jacket with an obi strip and is credited as mixed and mastered by Venus Records producer Tetsuo Hara using the label’s Venus Hyper Magnum Sound Direct Mix Stereo approach. (store.acousticsounds.com)

That alternate running order changes the narrative. On vinyl, the listener moves between sides, pauses and physically returns to the record. “Summer Night” no longer provides the ending; Steve Kuhn’s transformation of Chopin receives the final word. The digital sequence feels like one continuous late-night journey, while the double LP presents four smaller chapters.

Neither version changes the central achievement of Venus Audio Grade Selection Vol. 3. Terashima’s collection shows that the piano trio is not one sound but an entire landscape. Massimo Faraò brings cinematic weight, Jon Davis offers modern precision, and Eddie Higgins introduces rhythmic warmth. The Roma Trio approaches romance with restraint, while Vladimir Shafranov creates nocturnal momentum. Danilo Rea brings Italian memory, John Di Martino embraces melodic intimacy, Steve Kuhn connects jazz with Chopin, Kenny Barron demonstrates understated mastery, and Richie Beirach closes the digital programme in reflective twilight. The official high-resolution edition contains these ten performances in 24-bit/96kHz audio. (Shazam)

The album also explains why the piano trio remains one of the purest tests of an audiophile system. Piano demands speed, tonal accuracy and scale. Acoustic bass requires extension, texture and control. Drums need transient impact, air and dynamic freedom. More importantly, all three instruments must occupy the same believable acoustic event.

A system may produce deeper bass or brighter cymbals and still fail the musical test. The real question is whether the listener can follow the interaction. Does the bassist answer the pianist? Does a small rhythmic change by the drummer alter the direction of the phrase? Does the ensemble accelerate emotionally even when the tempo remains unchanged?

Venus Audio Grade Selection Vol. 3: Venus Piano Trio Collection by Yasukuni Terashima succeeds because it keeps returning to those questions. It offers audiophile sound quality, SACD presentation and high-resolution recording, but it never becomes a collection designed only for comparing cables or loudspeakers.

Its real subject is communication.

Three musicians enter a room. One strikes a key, another answers with a bass note, and the third places a cymbal sound between them. From those simple elements, entire worlds appear: a mysterious film, a crowded Latin street, Moscow after midnight, an Italian memory, a Chopin nocturne and a summer evening slowly becoming darkness.

That is the quiet power of the jazz piano trio. In the hands of Yasukuni Terashima and Venus Records, it becomes not only something to hear, but a place to enter.

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