Jazz violinist Junko Makiyama (49) will hold her first live performance with a seven-piece band she has named the “Symphonic Jazz Orchestra” at a live music restaurant in Tokyo in September.

As part of his “Classical Trio,” which includes his own violin, piano, and cello, he pursues a unique style of music that fuses jazz and classical music.

The trio just released their second album, Classical Trio 2, in June through the independent label HD Impressions.

The orchestra, which will debut in September, will expand the sound of this classical trio by adding trumpet, saxophone, trombone and drums. “I want to mix things together and expand the possibilities of my music,” he says enthusiastically.

A shocking encounter

Speaking of jazz violinists, France’s Stephane Grappelli (1908-1997) is widely known, and Japan has a pioneer called Naoko Terai (57).

Makiyama made his major debut in 2008 with the album “Mistral” through Pony Canyon.

He started playing the violin at the age of four, graduated from Musashino Academia Musicae, and further studied in France. After returning to Japan, he worked as a classical violinist, but he could not forget the CD “Side by Side” by the beloved violinist Itzhak Perlman (79), whom he encountered while studying abroad.

“When I listened to it, it was so much fun. I was like, what is this?”

The album featured Perlman performing standard numbers with jazz pianist Oscar Peterson (1925-2007), a recipient of the Praemium Imperiale Award.

Growing up in a household that only listened to classical music, Perlman recalls that jazz was “the first music I discovered on my own, and I felt like it was my destiny.”

I decided to study jazz, but I couldn’t find anyone in Japan who would teach me jazz violin.

He ended up at Berklee College of Music in Boston, a light music school that has seen many Japanese jazz musicians study abroad, including pianists Toshiko Akiyoshi (94) and Sadao Watanabe (91).

He persuaded his parents that he wanted to study jazz music composed by the great Perlman, and enrolled in January 2002.

Words from the Maestro

After a family member fell ill, he returned to Japan in the summer of 2003. Although he was unable to graduate from Berklee, he made some important encounters during his short stay in the United States.

I had the opportunity to visit the world-renowned conductor Seiji Ozawa (1935-2024) in his dressing room after he conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As we talked, we discovered that our families lived in the same neighborhood in Tokyo, and so we decided to become a father figure to him in America.

He was introduced to a second violinist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and had the opportunity to relearn the violin.

“Grate the radish, but don’t even grate it down to your fingers.” I’ll never forget the smile on Ozawa’s face when I invited him to my home for a hotpot party.

Around the same time in Boston, he also became acquainted with one of Japan’s leading jazz pianists, Makoto Ozone (63).

This was around the time when Ozone had just begun to study classical music, and he played Bach for me.

“The performance sounds a bit jumpy. It’s not the Bach I know,” Makiyama said. When he told Ozone his honest opinion, Ozone was left pondering whether he should seriously study classical music.

He also had the experience of performing with such great stars as jazz saxophonist Michael Brecker (1949-2007) and jazz bassist Charlie Haden (1937-2014).

“We had a very intense time in a short space of time.”

Then, the following words that Ozawa heard in the United States had a decisive influence on Makiyama’s career path.

“Music is categorized by genre so that CD stores can organize their shelves. But these barriers will disappear soon.”

Natural Music

After returning to Japan, he released his first album on an independent label in 2007 and made his major debut in 2008, but he was still searching for his own style of music and was not yet established.

He realized that “fusing the classical and jazz styles he had studied since childhood was the most natural music for me,” and he was able to give form to this through the album “Lucia – Slovenian Suite,” released by Pony Canyon in 2017.

Just as Ozawa said, “Walls like this won’t disappear,” the two were fused together and the walls were destroyed.

The band that pushed this direction forward was the Classical Trio, who released their first album in 1922.

There is no rhythm section of bass and drums as in a typical jazz trio.

Instead, the piano and cello support Makiyama’s violin. The instrumental arrangement is the same as that of a classical piano trio. The trio plays famous classical pieces, but also incorporates improvisation.

In their second album, released in June, they added drums to some songs and incorporated rhythmic elements.

There were also many fun touches incorporated into the piece, such as Ravel’s ballet piece “Bolero” suddenly transforming into the theme song for the film “Mission: Impossible.”

“If the violin was suited to jazz, there should be a lot more jazz violinists, but that’s not the case. I realized that the violin just isn’t suited to jazz. So, like Seiji said, I decided to break down the barriers and play the music I love. Maybe I’ve become more brazen as I’ve gotten older.”

On September 19th, the trio will perform at the live music restaurant “J.G. Brat Sound of Tokyo” in Shibuya, Tokyo, where they will further break down barriers with an expanded symphonic jazz orchestra. (Ken Ishii)