Press

  • "Lonely Island is a profound and moving album I could listen to forever."

    Melodiva (DE) - about the album “Lonely Island”

  • "The vocal surfing between styles is extraordinary, and it’s hard to believe that all these tracks feature the voice of a single artist. I can’t stop listening."

    Wprost Kultura Magazine (PL) about the album “Ysla”

  • "Bird-like vocal sensation!"

    Süddeutsche Zeitung (DE), Oliver Hochköppel

  • "One talent that cannot be taught is Yumi Ito’s gift for writing songs that are grand, layered, significant, enticingly diffuse, sometimes unfathomable, and often quite magical."

    Abendzeitung München (DE)

  • "Music from another planet, spherical and with an extraordinarily aesthetic sound."

    Concerto Magazine (AT)

  • "Ysla is going to be something of a 2023 highlight."

    UK Vibe, Steve Williams

  • "The Swiss Yumi Ito is one of the European vocal discoveries of recent years. With an irresistible timbre all her own, she sings self-composed songs that combine the simplicity of pop with the complexity of jazz."

    SWR 2 (DE), Ssirus W. Pakzad

  • "Very powerful when she elevates her scat singing like in Drama Queen and is accompanied only by bass and drums: so much fire, so much expression."

    Jazzreportagen (DE), Rainer Ortag

  • "I am taken by her intonationally impressive, gifted, stylistically rangy and ultra-musical voice."

    Gapplegate Music Review (US)

  • "Truly prodigious."

    JazzMania (BE)

  • "Exciting Polish-Japanese duo."

    UK Jazz News (UK), about the album “Ekual”

  • New List Item

    Description goes here

“A house of light, in the middle of the sea

Lonely Island isn't an album to be listened to distractedly. It's a dimly lit room, a lit candle, the artist's breath touching you. It's proof that the nakedness of sound isn't poverty, but absolute richness. In a world that screams, Yumi Ito whispers—going further than anyone else.

Listening to it is like finding yourself on an island, alone with the sea and the wind, and discovering that solitude can be beauty, that fragility is strength.”  

— Jazz in Family

“Beguiling, beautifully nuanced, neo-classical-tinged jazz merged with contemporary sweeping soundscapes. An accomplished and elegant pianist, an exquisite vocalist, an imaginative improviser and adept collaborator... Ito's accolades and credentials have long cemented her as a definitive force within contemporary jazz.”  

— Blue In Green Radio

“This is a stunning piece of music, full of sublime musicality and exploding with talent, which in fact is hardly surprising in view of Ito’s earlier work and potential.”

— Adam Baruch

“I am taken by her intonationally impressive, gifted, stylistically rangy and ultra-musical voice, which might remind you slightly and nicely of Björk or Imogen Heap or sometimes even Edie Brickell only more sophisticated but not in any obvious way. Her new album has seven very tunefully advanced songs bursting over with originality, with a feelingful content and lyrically bracing presence one does not encounter the likes of often, but even so this is very much her own way about it, arrangements, compositions and artistry Zazzy Jazzy-ish in ways that will perhaps floor you like it did me.”

— Grego Applegate Edwards, Gapplegate Music Review

  • Hessische niedersächsische Allgemeine Kassel

    Germany

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  • Kulturtipp Magazine

    Switzerland

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  • Dark Blue Notes Magazine

    Turkey

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