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Erena Terakubo

Erena Terakubo is a multi-talented saxophonist, flutist, clarinetist, composer, arranger, and educator from Sapporo, Japan. She is an international sensation whose career performances stretch five different continents. While still in high school, Terakubo released her debut album "North Bird," a collaboration with Kenny Barron, Christian McBride, Lee Pearson, and Peter Bernstein, which reached #1 on the Japanese jazz charts and was awarded Swing Journal's Gold Disc. Her broad experience has inspired five albums since. Recently, Terakubo has been sharing her expertise by teaching workshops at U.S. universities and touring Europe and Japan.

Terakubo has played notable venues and events such as International Jazz Day 2022 at the UN General Assembly Hall in New York, the Tokyo Jazz Festival, the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, Dizzy's Jazz Club Jazz at Lincoln Center, Smoke Jazz Club (where she led a band featuring special guest Louis Hayes), the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Beantown Jazz Festival, the Blue Note Tokyo, Blue Note New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Terakubo has performed in Burkina Faso, Chile, Argentina, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, France, Austria, Israel and Australia.

In addition to leading the Erena Terakubo quartet, she has appeared with a wide variety of ensembles. These ensembles include Jon Faddis and his All-Star Big Band, the Kenny Barron Quartet (with Kenny Barron, Kiyoshi Kitagawa, and Jonathan Black), the Mingus Big Band, and the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra. In addition, she was a part of "Bird Calls" a special livestream event celebrating the centennial of Charlie Parker's birth presented by The Jazz Foundation of America. In 2023, she'll join the Ulysses Owens Jr. & Generation Y Band on a European Tour.

Terakubo has collaborated to produce a total of six albums. Since the debut of "North Bird" in 2010, she has released "New York Attitude" (with Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Lee Pearson and Dominick Farinacci) and "Burkina" (with Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Jimmy Cobb, and Lenny White). Downbeat and Jazziz Magazines commended her 4th album, "A Time for Love" from Celler Live (with David Hazeltine, David Williams, and Lewis Nash). King Records, a major Japanese label, released her 5th album "Little Girl Power" with Mayuko Katakura, Motoi Kanamori, and Shinnosuke Takahashi, as well as her latest album "Absolutely Live!." Aside from these projects, Terakubo wrote the theme song "High Touch (High Five)" for a TV broadcast which aired in Hokkaido, Japan every day in 2018.

Terakubo was the first Japanese recipient of the prestigious Presidential Scholarship at Berklee College of Music, where she received her bachelor's degree in 2018.

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Album Review

Ulysses Owens, Jr. and Generation Y: A New Beat

Read "A New Beat" reviewed by Jack Bowers


The rhythms presented on award-winning drummer Ulysses Owens Jr.'s latest album are not exactly A New Beat, as they have been heard in various configurations for at least eighty years or more, but they do provide a plausible indication of the path that Art Blakey's legendary Jazz Messengers would presumably have followed had Blakey lived into the twenty-first century. Owens, who teaches at the Juilliard School in New York City, has a knack for spotting and encouraging ...

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Album Review

Ulysses Owens, Jr. and Generation Y: A New Beat

Read "A New Beat" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


A New Beat, crafted by the multi-Grammy award-winning drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. and his Generation Y outfit, materializes as a vivid emblem of jazz's evolving dynamics. This album, an amalgamation of nine tracks, epitomizes the fusion of classic jazz standards with inventive perspectives. Among its highlights, “Bird Lives" notably shines for its technical brilliance and tribute to jazz icons, striking a harmonious balance between honoring the past and embracing the new. This track, alongside the production's repertoire, demonstrates the ensemble's ...

6
Album Review

Ulysses Owens Jr. Big Band: Soul Conversations

Read "Soul Conversations" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Drummer Ulysses Owens Jr.'s Big Band comes out swinging on its debut recording, Soul Conversations, thundering through Michael Dease's incendiary arrangement of the Dizzy Gillespie/John Lewis flame-thrower, “Two Bass Hit." For more such heat, however, the listener must move forward to Track 5, John Coltrane's impulsive “Giant Steps," thence to Track 9 for Charles Turner III's earnest homage to “Harlem Harlem Harlem," on which he doubles as vocalist. That's not to say that everything in between is ...

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Album Review

Erena Terakubo: New York Attitude

Read "New York Attitude" reviewed by Edward Blanco


Erena Terakubo is the next emerging star in a long list of young and gifted musicians hailing from the land of “The Rising Sun" who, may have thankfully, chosen jazz music as a possible career choice. Barely 20 years old and from Sapporo, Japan, this alto saxophonist caught the ear of jazz luminaries like renowned saxophonist Sadao Watanabe and Grammy award-winning bassist Eddie Gomez among others, then later signed with King Records, a major Japanese jazz label, for her first ...

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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

A New Beat

Cellar Records
2024

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Soul Conversations

Outside in Music
2021

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New York Attitude

King Record Co., Ltd.
2012

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