‘Pere’ by Edward Simon
Kaoru Tsubakida (As)
Akane Nakagaki (Voice)
Shota Watanabe (Pf)
Yoshitaka Yamashita (Per)
Kaoru Tsubakida
Tsubakida was born in 1964 Iwami, Tottori.
He started playing jazz when he attended Nihon Fukusi University.
He studied jazz theory with Toshihisa Morita. He also took saxophone lessons from Akira Omori and Masato Kumoi.
In 1992, he paticipated many jam sessions In New York City and was greatly influenced by Atsushi Ikeda,Yosuke Inoue and Shingo Okuda.
In 2001 he played in Seattle Year Shot Jazz Festival as a member of the C.U.G.Jazz orchestra.
At this time, he released four albums; ‘Make It So’ in 2004, ‘Color Scheme’ in 2008, ‘The Cloudless Sky’ in 2012, and ‘The Mountain With No Name’ in 2016.
He also teaches the instrument and many players he taught are now playing as professional musicians.
He is playing as a member of Shuhei Mizuno Big Band and Kenny’s All Stars Big Band, as well as his own group.
Akane Nakagaki
Nakagaki is born in 1982, at Toyota city, Aichi Prefecture.
She started her activities in the Tokai area in 2004. In February 2008, she released 1st album “Yes” from What’s New Records label. The album was nominated for the 2008 Jazz Disk Award on Swing journal magazine. In August of the same year, she participated in “Jazz vocal showcase VOL.1” released from Grace’s Notes Records. In June 2011, 2nd Album “River” was released from What’s New Records. In the same year, appeared in Nagoya Blue Note. She paticipated in the KASH’s album ‘EVER FLOW’ in 2012. She also participated in Kaoru Tsubakida Band and released and his 3rd album “Coludles Sky” in July 2012 and his 4th album “The mountain with no name” in September 2016. She released her newest album “Lost Generation” from What’s New Records in April 2017. She currently performing on many festivals and stages at jazz street nationwide as well as providing jingles to CM.
Shota Watanabe
Shota Watanabe was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1988. He grew up with the musical influence of his father, also a great guitarist, Norio Watanabe. He started studying classical piano from the age of four. When Shota was sixteen years old, he started to take jazz lessons from Donny Schwekendiek, to polish up his improvisation skill.
Watanabe started playing music in public with the jazz funk band ‘Akamon’ in 2005. He participated many jazz bands, such as the Wataru Hamazaki Quartet, Kaoru Tsubakida Quintet, Hideaki Kanazawa Trio, and Noon band.
In 2010, Shota participated in the recording for the album “Once upon the summer time” by Japanese singer “Noon”, and in 2012 he made his first appearance at Blue Note Nagoya as a member of Noon’s band.
Shota currently performs with his own band, in addition to providing musical support in a wide range of music genres to various other artists, mainly in the Tokyo and Nagoya areas of Japan, as well as nationwide.
Yoshitaka Yamashita
Yamashita started playing drums when he was in high school. He attended Nagoya University. While at the University, he joined jazz big band and started playing jazz. He attended DrummersCollective after graduating the University. He studied various musical styles of drum set and percussions at the school.
Since returning to Japan, Yamashita joined club-jazz band ‘native’ and released six CDs and one EP. After leaving the band, he joined many sessions/bands.
As a member of the piano trio ‘Dear Blues’, he played at “Festival eclats d’Email” in 2013 at Limoges, France. The trio released the newest album ‘La Mesha’ in 2016.
Yamashita have toured Italy in 2014 as a member of the band ‘TRISPACE’ and recorded in Sweden. In 2015, the band released their newest album ‘Nightfall’.
In 2016, Yamashita joined in Kaoru Tsubakida’s album ‘Mountain with No Name’ and also have done a nationwide tour.
Yamashita currently performs with a couples of his regular bands, in addition to doing various sessions/recordings in a wide range of music genres.
