Jazz Articles about Atzko Kohashi

About Atzko Kohashi

In the Artist's Own Words

Why Is Japan a Jazz Paradise—or—Why the Japanese Feel at Home in Jazz?

by Atzko Kohashi
July 6, 2025

Part 1 | Part 2Why is Japan such a jazz-loving nation? No other country has reissued so many classic jazz albums as Japan. From Blue Note to Riverside to Prestige, masterpieces are constantly being revived--remastered with pristine sound, released in exclusive paper sleeves, or in ultra-high-quality formats like SHM-CD or SACD. Some albums long out of print even in the U.S. have been revived only in Japan. For instance, Bill Evans' Waltz for Debby and Sunday ...

Album Review

Atzko Kohashi & Tony Overwater: Porgy

Read "Porgy" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 30, 2025

George Gershwin's 1935 folk opera, Porgy and Bess, a quintessentially American masterpiece, has had its share of jazz interpretations. Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald visited the work in 1957 on Verve Records. Pianist Oscar Peterson dug into the Gershwin score--again, on Verve--in 1959. But the most notable rendition is the Miles Davis/Gil Evans collaboration Porgy and Bess (Columbia Records,1958), one of the finest big band jazz albums of all time. So what more is there to say about ...

Hi-Res Jazz

TRPTK: Breaking Genre Walls

by Mark Werlin
December 11, 2018

TRPTK, an independent new music label based in the Netherlands, produces hi-res recordings with astonishingly realistic sound quality. TRPTK's catalogue of jazz and new music erases the boundaries of musical genres, and pursues a commonality of purpose that overrides differences in cultural and national backgrounds. Æon Trio: Elegy Elegy, performed by the jazz ensemble Æon Trio of Japanese pianist-composer Atzko Kohashi, Dutch bassist Frans van der Hoeven and Russian-born cellist Maya Fridman, draws on the diverse streams of ...