This box set retrospective of recordings from Japanese pianist and composer Aki Takase spans the years when she was working in Germany during the early 1980s and late 90s. As well as playing alongside a group of Japanese players, other musicians she collaborated with during this period included Portuguese jazz singer Maria João and Danish bass player Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, both featured here on her 1990 album Alice. Recorded at the Jazz Ost-West Festival in Nürnberg, this trio performance is made up of a varied selection of material, João's acrobatic vocal merging energetically with Pedersen's elasticated bass thudding and Takase's shimmering piano playing. Of special note here is the singer's ‘Mae-Dou-Iho’, an unaccompanied solo piece that acts as a perfect example of the voice as instrument. As well as performing her own work, Takase also pays tribute to other great jazz musicians such as (on the solo Shima Shoka) Carla Bley, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins and her husband (and fellow pianist and composer) Alexander von Schlippenbach. On Duet For Eric Dolphy, Takase and bass clarinet player Rudi Mahall powerfully evoke the spirit of another jazz giant, running through a set of Dolphy standards, from straight ahead tunes like ‘17 West’ and ‘Something Sweet, Something Tender’, to more free jazz exercises such as ‘Gazzeloni’ and ‘Straight Up And Down’. Also included in the box is the first CD release of the Aki Takase Trio's Song For Hope, four original compositions where the full extent of Takase's formidable talent and prowess as a player and composer is elaborately unfurled.