Shuhei Mizuno brings his strings album to the room inside ‘Starry Eyes’

QAZZ marks strings on six pieces: “Pathos Remembered,” “Poinsettia,” “Fukuda’s Waltz,” “Hush A Bye — Reiwa6-10,” “Just One of Those Things — Reiwa6-5” and “Behind the Eight Ball.” Seven other tracks retain a smaller frame. That alternation matters. A listener does not spend the entire album inside one orchestral color; the string quartet can arrive, withdraw and make the trio sound newly exposed when it is left alone. [6]

The 13-track sequence is broad without being miscellaneous. Nine Mizuno compositions sit beside a traditional tune, Cole Porter, Charlie Parker and Oscar Pettiford. The label hears a cinematic opening in “Pathos Remembered,” a 1950s inflection and blues harp in “Poinsettia,” a double-time modulation in “Kiev,” and contemporary reframings in the two standards carrying Reiwa subtitles. The record therefore moves between authored melody, bebop memory and arrangement as revision. [6]

The most revealing concert question is not simply whether the strings sound lush. Listen for function: whether the quartet states a theme, builds inner motion behind the piano, punctuates the rhythm section, or disappears long enough for Otsuka and Yamazaki to reset the scale. Because no public set list has been announced, even the balance between string-arranged album pieces and trio material remains open until the performance. [6][1][3]

Mizuno’s official biography places composition and arrangement beside piano, not behind it. He began playing jazz as a teenager in Aichi, worked in college with the Tomonao Hara–Masahiko Osaka quintet, later toured with Hiroshi Murata’s Bop Band, and wrote for the C.U.G Jazz Orchestra. After solo-piano releases in 2005 and 2015, he formed a big band in 2016 devoted to his own compositions. The new record condenses that long large-ensemble practice rather than introducing arranging as a late ornament. [8][9][10]

QAZZ traces the project to Yamazaki. The label had encountered the drummer through another recording, learned that he shared Mizuno’s home region and played in his trio, and made the offer. What began as a conventional piano-trio idea grew when strings were proposed. The resulting session captured all 13 tracks in a single day—six with the quartet and seven without it. [6][13]

That speed does not mean the rhythm team is anonymous. Otsuka plays bass on most of the album; Yamazaki’s official profile reaches beyond jazz into Latin, Brazilian and percussion work; and Mizuno supplies the compositions and arrangements. On tour, those three retain the center. Their continuity gives four new string players a stable pulse and harmonic map against which details of attack, blend and phrasing can change. [6][13][12]

The complete STAR★EYES lineup is Mizuno on piano, Otsuka on bass and Yamazaki on drums, joined by Yumi Kou on first violin, Saya Matsuki on second violin, Yoriko Sobue on viola and Kaya Kubota on cello. QAZZ, Mizuno and Yamazaki all publish the same seven-player bill, and Yamazaki’s tour page specifies the two violin chairs rather than listing an undifferentiated pair. [1][2][3]

The studio quartet was Maiko on first violin, Crusher Kimura on second violin, Shiori Tanaka on viola and Orie Hirayama on cello. None appears in the touring quartet. That is the decisive personnel fact behind the release show: these parts leave the recording ensemble and become live material for four new interpreters, while the main trio remains recognizable. It is a transfer of architecture, not a reunion of everyone heard on the disc. [6][3]

The touring strings also bring different musical histories. Kou’s official site documents classical training, tango study and cross-genre work around Nagoya. QAZZ’s profile sheet describes Matsuki’s chamber-music training; Sobue is listed in the Chubu Philharmonic’s viola section; and Kubota identifies as an Okazaki-born Aichi University of the Arts graduate working as a cellist in the prefecture. Their common ground is regional, but their routes into the quartet are not identical. [14][7][15][21]

The instrumentation creates choices a generic “strings” credit can hide. First violin can carry a top line while second violin and viola determine how much harmonic grain sits in the middle. Cello can join that inner fabric or approach Otsuka’s register, making the seam between quartet and rhythm section audible. The practical listening test is whether seven players become one blended body or preserve several distinct layers—and when Mizuno’s piano chooses to belong to each. [3][6]

STAR★EYES describes itself as a jazz bar operating since 1982, four minutes from Kakuozan Station. Its official address is 3-4-1 Kikusaka-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, on the first floor of G House. That continuity matters for a composer whose public biography is centered on Aichi and Nagoya: this is not a touring package dropping into an interchangeable hall, but a home-region club with a documented place in his working life. [5][8][9]

“Starry Eyes” makes the relationship explicit. QAZZ lists the track as a Mizuno original and a response to Parker’s “Star Eyes”; the official video title adds the dedication to STAR★EYES. Yet the album notation does not mark track six as one of the six string pieces, and it credits Makoto Uemura rather than Otsuka on bass. Even within the album, the room-linked piece is an exception to the headline configuration. [6][25]

Another album piece already has a visual record inside the club. Mizuno’s official “Fukuda’s Waltz” video documents a performance at STAR★EYES on October 5, 2025. The recording is a big-band performance, not the album’s trio-and-strings version; the label marks the waltz as one of the six string-arranged tracks. The same composition can therefore be traced through at least two documented ensemble designs before the release tour begins. [24][6]

That is why the venue belongs to the feature’s thesis without predicting the night’s repertoire. “Starry Eyes” may or may not be called, and the tour pages do not promise an album-in-sequence performance. What is certain is that Mizuno is bringing a project containing a tribute to this room back through its door, with a string section that did not make the record. [1][3][6][25]

The three videos below come from Mizuno’s own big-band channel. They do not show the August touring band, and that distinction is their value. Each description identifies Mizuno as composer and publishes the large ensemble’s personnel. “Pathos Remembered” and “Starry Eyes” come from the big band’s April 12, 2026 tenth-anniversary concert; “Fukuda’s Waltz” comes from STAR★EYES in 2025. [22][23][24][25]

Start with “Pathos Remembered.” QAZZ places it first on the album and describes its string opening in cinematic terms. The video offers a different orchestration—saxes, six trumpets, five trombones, two bassists, drums and Mizuno’s piano. Rather than treating it as a preview, use it to locate the composition’s large shape, then ask how four bows and a piano trio can carry comparable weight with far fewer voices. [6][23]

Next, use “Fukuda’s Waltz” as a room study. The camera preserves the big band inside STAR★EYES, while Mizuno’s note says he wrote the piece during treatment for the ensemble’s original bassist. On the album it becomes a string-arranged track. The comparison is not about deciding which version is definitive; it reveals how personal material can move from brass and reeds toward a smaller chamber balance. [24][6]

Finish with “Starry Eyes.” Its official title names the dedication that makes August 17 more than a convenient date at a familiar club. The video again supplies a big-band version, while QAZZ places a smaller, non-string-marked reading on the album. If the tune appears in Nagoya, its next form is unknown. If it does not, the dedication still explains why this room remains audible around the event. [25][6][1]

Nagoya College of Music describes bebop as the foundation from which Mizuno develops performance, composition and arrangement. His own and C.U.G. biographies document decades of writing for jazz orchestras alongside piano work. That background clarifies the album’s balance: strings broaden timbre, but the track list keeps Parker, Pettiford, Cole Porter and a traditional tune in conversation with Mizuno’s originals. [9][8][10][6]

Several titles make the conversation unusually legible. QAZZ calls “Clark In Motion” a Sonny Clark homage; “Starry Eyes” answers Parker’s “Star Eyes”; Parker’s “Confirmation” appears under its own name; and Pettiford’s “Blues in the Closet” closes the album. The record does not require strings to certify ambition. Its larger claim is that a composer can keep bebop’s repertoire and forward motion while treating ensemble size as a variable. [6]

The label emphasizes Mizuno’s approachable melodic writing, while his institutional biography emphasizes trial, improvisation and arrangement. Those are not opposing descriptions. Melody gives a listener something to recognize when the same piece changes scale; improvisation prevents the new quartet from becoming a mechanical copy of the session. The release show matters at precisely that intersection between a fixed score and musicians hearing one another in real time. [6][9][3]

The STAR★EYES performance is Monday, August 17, 2026. Doors are listed for 6 p.m. and music for 7 p.m. The touring page sets admission at ¥5,000, with food and drink plus a ¥500 table charge separate; seating is unreserved. It directs Nagoya reservations to the club by telephone at 052-763-2636. Jazz DateBook’s event and venue pages provide the internal calendar path, but the artist and presenter pages remain the source of current practical truth. [3][1][5][26][28]

Nagoya is night three of four: Kasugai on August 15, Hamamatsu on August 16, STAR★EYES on August 17 and Mikawa-Anjo on August 18. The same seven musicians are billed throughout. The itinerary gives the new quartet two scheduled public nights to negotiate Mizuno’s charts with the trio before the group reaches the room behind “Starry Eyes”; the following evening offers the experiment one more setting. [1][2][3][12]

No official source reviewed here publishes a set list, running time or promise to perform all 13 album tracks. Confirm details before traveling, and do not treat “Starry Eyes” as guaranteed repertoire. The documented reason to listen is already enough: a one-day studio project becomes a regional ensemble, every string chair changes, and a Nagoya composer brings that revised design to a club he has written into his musical world. [6][1][3][25]