Senri Oe | "Homework" - DL Media Music

JAPANESE PIANIST/COMPOSER SENRI OE ANNOUNCES HOMEWORK, A 16-TRACK “SOUNDTRACK FOR CINEMA WITHOUT VISUALS” FOR ACOUSTIC TRIO, SOLO PIANO & SELF-PRODUCED ELECTRONICS

AFTER DECADES AS A JAPANESE POP ICON AND A NEW YORK JAZZ REINVENTION, OE TURNS GRIEF, MEMORY, IMPERFECTION & “FUTURE MUSIC” INTO HIS MOST PERSONAL JAZZ STATEMENT

FEATURING BASSIST MATT CLOHESY & DRUMMER ROSS PEDERSON

ARRIVING SEPTEMBER 4 VIA PND RECORDS/MVD DISTRIBUTION (WORLDWIDE, EXCLUDING JAPAN)

ARRIVING SEPTEMBER 4 VIA SONY MUSIC MASTERWORKS (JAPAN ONLY)

Homework is the forthcoming album by Japanese pianist and composer Senri Oe, arriving September 4 worldwide. Recorded between Oe’s Brooklyn apartment and The Bunker Studio with longtime collaborators bassist Matt Clohesy and drummer Ross Pederson, the 16-track set moves between acoustic trio performance, solo piano, and self-produced electronics.

Oe calls Homework “a soundtrack for a cinema without visuals” — music listeners can experience as their own internal movie. The album arrives after eighteen years in New York and the death of Oe’s beloved dachshund Peace, who crossed the ocean with him and stayed beside him through his New York reinvention. “I wanted to create this album for my generation,” Oe says. “People my age face the same crossroads: Where are we heading, and how do we keep going?”

Born in Osaka, Oe began classical piano at three and encountered jazz at fifteen, though pop music shaped his first career. After debuting on Epic/Sony in 1983, he released 45 singles and 18 original albums, becoming an arena-scale, multi-platinum singer-songwriter while also working as an actor, broadcaster, television host, author, and producer. Songs including “Rain,” “Jūnin Toiro,” “Kakkō Warui Furarekata,” and “Arigatō” became fixtures of Japanese pop. Their singable melodies and conversational phrasing still echo through Oe’s instrumental music.

At 47, Oe walked away from celebrity and moved to Brooklyn with Peace. He enrolled at The New School and returned to the role of student under mentors including Junior Mance and Aaron Goldberg. A nationally famous pop artist started over in New York decades later than most players. 2012’s Boys Mature Slow announced the shift, followed by 2013’s Spooky Hotel.

Over the next decade, Oe moved through larger ensembles, vocal writing, trio records, and home production. 2018’s Boys & Girls brought pop songwriting back into the frame, while 2019’s Hmmm settled into trio language with Clohesy and drummer Ari Hoenig, the rhythm section that still anchors Oe’s music.

It was 2021’s inward-looking Letter to N.Y. that served as a revolutionary turning point. Written and self-produced in solitary isolation during the pandemic using only a PC and a mini-keyboard, the album marked a bold evolutionary leap for Oe. This home-production breakthrough laid the crucial foundation for Homework, bridging his living-room electronic experiments with live acoustic trio performances.

Drummer Ross Pederson later joined the trio for 2023’s Class of ’88, where Oe completely dissolved the boundaries between pop songwriting and jazz composition. “My identity as a singer-songwriter is still my core strength,” he says. “When I write jazz, I’m always composing songs without words. Even without lyrics, every piano melody carries the breath of hidden words.”

New York tested Oe. He lost his father. Years later, he lost Peace as well. Subway delays piled up. Daily life kept shifting beneath him, but he kept working. “The overwhelming sense of loss stripped away all need for pretension,” he says. “It made me look more directly at the meaning of my life — where I am now, and where I’m heading.” At 65, Oe found fewer easy answers.

Oe developed Homework over more than five years while traveling between America, Europe, and Japan. He kept returning to one idea: an “invisible movie soundtrack.” After Peace died, he spent long stretches alone, and the soundtrack concept sharpened. He worked at a small desk in what he came to call his “Lab.”

A February 2026 return to Japan pushed the project further. Touring his home country, Oe heard old songs differently. Familiar material loosened. Songs he once performed became raw material for new work. “Life is always messed up,” Oe says. “That’s the reality.” Oe began thinking of homework as adulthood itself: grief, trial and error, and starting again.

The opening “Fresh Edge” compresses decades into a one-minute overture built from fragments of Futatsu no Shukudai (“Two Homework Assignments”), a composition Oe first wrote in 1985. Trio interplay, loops, and digital processing pull fragments of 1985 into the present.

“Rain Glass” continues the emotional thread of “Rain,” Oe’s late-’80s song later revived through Makoto Shinkai’s The Garden of Words. Acoustic piano, bass, loops, and studio textures recast “Rain” in a quieter, more unsettled setting. “Acha,” inspired by Ella Fitzgerald’s playful phrasing and pushed through Monk-like rhythmic friction, bends melody into imbalance, surprise, and humor.

“Dear X,” dedicated to Charlie Parker, condenses bebop language into a short Logic Pro miniature driven by sped-up phrases and animation-like momentum. “Pure Scar,” inspired by Michel Legrand, folds loneliness and street sound into the trio. Oe texturalizes New York into the arrangement: voices outside, interruptions, street noise. “First Wish” draws on Brazilian music like Antônio Carlos Jobim and captures the nerves of a first take. “Half Done,” a duo with Clohesy, never settles. Bass and piano keep searching together. “I wanted a beautiful melody,” Oe says, “but also something that steps outside it — because that feels closer to real life.”

At the center of the album sit “Amber Lab” and “Amber Lab 2,” companion pieces inspired by Oe’s Williamsburg apartment and the ritual of composing at sunset. One unfolds through electronics. The other uses the trio. Together, the tracks catch Oe in Williamsburg at dusk: light fading through the window, voices drifting outside, another idea still taking shape. “Boyhood (A Note, Not Now)” follows as a solo piano miniature shaped by opera, chamber music, and the compact logic of Mozart, Bach, and Puccini.

“Country Love,” built entirely in Logic Pro, channels Oe’s affection for country harmony and melodic directness. “Homework” distills the essence of adulthood. “Then & Now” turns spoken text into autobiography, reflecting on memory and doubt. “Mohawked” bursts open with Broadway energy and comic exaggeration, inspired by an impulsive haircut and the absurd comedy of New York life. Oe hears “Stormy Day” as one of the clearest places where pop, jazz, R&B, blues, city pop, fusion, and crossover energy collide. “Tricky D” closes the set with mischief and momentum.

Homework keeps returning to one question: after everything, what remains? “In this complex, chaotic world,” Oe says, “I keep searching for something simple — one pure note that remains. Maybe that’s my DNA. That’s the journey of my life.”