So is this your first trip to Japan? Bassist Nikolai Eilertsen: For me, yes, but the other guys in the band have been before with different outfits. You had a real Hammond B3 on stage. You didn't ship that over, did you? No, no. The costs would ...
This is your first time at Tokyo Jazz Festival, but not your first visit to Japan. What's your overall impression? Trumpeter Eric Vloeimans: The audience is really enthusiastic and they're very polite, and you see that jazz music is very popular here. It seems like ...
Tres-men are made up of percussionist Takahiro "Matzz" Matsuoka, DJ Yoshijiro Sakurai and keyboardist Yusuke Nakamura. Your debut album came out in April, and here we are, five months later at Tokyo Jazz Festival. How did that come about? TM: We got the offer around May. ...
Pianist Ai Kuwabara is waxing nostalgic at the offices of her record label, East Works Entertainment, in Tokyo's Minato Ward. "I first went to Tokyo Jazz Festival at the International Forum when I was in the fifth or sixth grade of elementary school, and I'll ...
Jazz accounts for around 5 percent of total recorded music sales in Japan, but despite that the genre is ubiquitous in cities nationwide. Don't believe me? Take a closer listen to the background music you hear while shopping at your local shōtengai (shopping arcade) or ...
This month started with a trip to Cotton Club in Tokyo's Marunouchi district to see the trio Aquapit play a gig to promote their new album "Orange." Before the show even started, something caught my attention: Occupying center stage was a vintage Hammond B3 organ, ...
Jazz fusion? That's big hair and flares, right? The genre in which jazz acts go electric and incorporate elements of funk and rock with jazz improvisation, all rolled up into lengthy jams? Well, yes, but only if you're stuck in the late 1960s or ...
One of the highlights of my Golden Week this year was a concert by the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Jazz Orchestra at Blue Note in Tokyo. Reuniting her big band for the first time in a decade, Akiyoshi rolled back the clock with a superb ...
One decision that faces jazz musicians toward the start of their careers is whether to continue the traditions of what's gone before them or to try and strike out in a new direction. Pianist Yuki Futami, 26, has chosen the former path and has just ...
For Japanese jazz musicians these days, going to the United States to further mastery of the genre is a much-pursued rite of passage. This route has enabled a number of acts to gain international recognition and success.
