Music

Chiyoko Szlavnics

Chiyoko Szlavnics has been composing music that combines acoustic instruments and sinewaves since around the year 2004. This combination of sound sources produces music that shimmers with aspects of sound not usually audible in music that is concerned with fast-changing scenarios. Her slow music allows certain details of sound, including certain psychoacoustical phenomena to come […]

Nobuo Kubota

Nobuo Kubota was born on June 27, 1932 in Vancouver BC. He has degree in architecture from the University of Toronto. He practiced architecture for 10 years before becoming an artist. He is also a musician, sound artist and sound singer. As an artist, he has a tendency to work in isolation and remains outside […]

Takeo Yamashiro

Takeo Yamashiro is a shakuhachi master who has lived and practiced his music in Canada since 1972. Prior to his arrival in Vancouver, Yamashiro trained under and played with two Kyoto Masters, Shuzan Yamashita and Kofu Kikusui. In 1971, he was appointed with mastership and the designated name of Rempu (Lotus Wind), the Chief Protégé […]

Hiroshi Koshiyama

Hiroshi Koshiyama co-founded the Winnipeg-based professional taiko group Fubuki Daiko with his wife, Naomi Guilbert in 1995. Born and raised in San Francisco, he became a Canadian citizen in 2000 after moving to Winnipeg. He received his formative training with Grandmaster Seiichi Tanaka and the San Francisco Taiko Dojo where he also acted as the […]

Naomi Guilbert

Naomi Guilbert is a writer who set aside writing in 1995 to focus on music when she co-founded the Winnipeg based professional taiko group Fubuki Daiko with her husband, Hiroshi Koshiyama. Guilbert received her formative training with Grandmaster Seiichi Tanaka and the San Fransicso Taiko Dojo where she was also a principal instructor. She has […]

Janet Horne Cozens

Janet Horne Cozens began studying art at the age of two in Japan. Her love of art continued after her family immigrated to Northern Ontario thanks to her mother, a well known haiku poet, who encouraged her to be creative and explore various media. After graduating from the University of Toronto with a degree in […]

Ron Korb

Grammy® Award nominated flutist and composer Ron Korb has released 30 albums in 20 countries and plays a wide variety of indigenous woodwinds from around the world. Ron is on the list of ‘Ten Best Flute Players in the World’ and has won numerous awards. After graduating the University of Toronto he moved to Tokyo […]

Frank Nakashima

Frank Tadashi Nakashima was born in Toronto on July 22, 1951. He is a graduate of York University (Toronto) Bachelor of Fine Arts 1975, specializing in the performance practice of Medieval and Renaissance music. He has performed with The Toronto Consort (1972-1974), the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir (founding member) 1981-1986 and was a consultant for Poculi […]

Ed Koyama

Ed Koyama is a musician born and raised in Toronto. He has played guitar and saxophone professionally in local bands. Performances include a number of albums for Terry Watada with other local Sansei/Nisei musicians.

Linda Uyehara Hoffman

Linda Uyehara Hoffman has been a taiko (Japanese drum) player for over 30 years. She was a founding member of Katari Taiko, the first taiko group in Canada, and of Sawagi Taiko, the first all-women’s taiko group in North America, with whom she continues to perform. As a folksinger/guitarist, she sang in coffee houses in […]

Boko Suzuki

Boko Suzuki is a music director, composer, and arranger formerly based in Toronto and New York and now in Colorado. He began his music career as a keyboard and piano player in the mid-1980s in Toronto, and by the 1990s was conducting productions of musical theatre classics such as Phantom of the Opera and Miss […]

Roy Kumano

Roy Kumano was one of the most well-known Nisei harmonica players, and a member of the Lemon Creek Harmonica Band. He was very active as a harmonica performer and bandleader in Vancouver prior to the forced removal, giving solo performances as well as leading groups such as the Gakuyukai and Hompa Harmonica Bands. He was […]

Harry Aoki

Harry Hiro-o Aoki was a Nisei harmonica and stand-up bass player, known for his musical virtuosity and his enthusiasm for fostering intercultural understanding through music. Born in Cumberland, BC, the second son of two Japanese Language School teachers, Harry grew up listening to Bach and Duke Ellington, and debating intellectual and social ideas around the […]

Martin Kobayakawa

Martin Kobayakawa is a guitarist and songwriter who was a member of the Vancouver folk-rock band Number One Son. He performed at the first Powell Street Festival in 1977 alongside Terry Watada, and also appeared on Watada’s album Runaway Horses (original vinyl release and the re-release on CD. He is a versatile musician proficient on […]

Butch Watanabe

Jiro ‘Butch’ Watanabe was an accomplished jazz trombonist who played with numerous famous musicians and prominent large ensembles in Toronto and on various tours throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Born in Fraser Mills, British Columbia, Butch was separated from his family as a young man by the internment, with family members sent to different […]