Yuko Kawasaki

Yuko Kawasaki is an NYC-based vocalist, improviser, and composer.
She believes that music, her passion, expresses what is invisible, but definitely there. Characteristics in life such as emotions, smells, and memories that can only be felt and remembered, but never touched.
It’s her mission to capture these invisible qualities through jazz composition and share them with audiences all around the world.

Like most passions, Yuko’s started off small, before even picking up a trombone, her first instrument, at the age of 9 to play in a local brass band.
In those early years, her love for music instead took shape in drawings on the backside of newspaper ads as she listened to her father’s record collection, enjoying the stories within the sounds.

Yuko joined the J’s Bee, a Japanese progressive jazz band as a vocalist and lyricist, releasing five albums with the band. They performed at some of the best venues in Japan, including Blue Note, Bottom Line, and one of the biggest festivals, Metamorphose. The album “Isotope” released by Far Out Recordings, U.K. in 2013 was highly acclaimed by DJs such as Giles Peterson and has been aired around the world on media platforms such as BBC 6 music, KCRW, PBB radio, to name a few.

Yuko has been performing at jazz venues and festivals based in New York, such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, National Art Center in Canada, The Metropolitan Museum, Japan Society, Smalls, as vocalist and composer since she moved to New York City to explore her music.

She recently has performed with her trio at the Metropolitan museum and shared the stage with Anthony Roth Costanzo and Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. She performed with Grammy Award-winning pianist and arranger, John Beasley at Jazz at Lincoln Center. She has performed with one of great influencing saxophonists in the current jazz scene, Dayna Stephens in the National Art Center's online performance "Northern Cadence International Jazz Series".

Website: https://www.yukokawasaki.com

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