Jazz

Carol Oya

Carol Oya hails from Vancouver. She’s been singing pretty much all her life. As a kid, she loved to watch “Solid Gold” and mimic her idols, Olivia Newton-John and Sheena Easton. Like every good Asian parent, her mum forced her to take piano lessons from the age of five. She fondly remembers crying while doing […]

Lily Ide

Ritsuko Lily Ide was a popular Nisei singer in Vancouver in the late 1930s and early 1940s who performed at community dances and had professional singing engagements in eastern Canada. She passed away in Slocan in 1943.

Kaya

Kaya is a vocalist and songwriter based in Burnaby, BC with a Bachelor of Music in Jazz from Capilano University. As a queer woman of colour, she values diversity and representation, and strives to create inclusive spaces in the Vancouver music scene. Kaya draws influences from artists such as Lake Street Dive, Nina Simone, Rebecca […]

Tim Tamashiro

Tim Tamashiro is a singer and ‘jazz evangelist’, well-known as the host of Tonic on CBC Radio 2. Growing up in Blackfalds, Alberta, Tamashiro had six months of piano lessons before his mother and piano teacher decided to let him teach himself how to play by ear; he has since become a passionate believer in […]

Masaki Watanabe

Masaki Watanabe is a journalist/translator and a jazz musician with an international background. Born in Tokyo in 1945 to a Japanese Finnish father and a Japanese mother, he graduated from International Christian University in 1966 after which he joined Reuters news agency in London. He has since worked as a Reuters correspondent in North America […]

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 […]

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 […]

Roy Miya

Roy Miya is a musician who was born in 1925, Vancouver. At the age of 16, he first heard Vernon Hakkaku on piano playing Amapola, written by Joseph Lacalle, while on a boat on the Skeena River. Roy was so impressed, he began to teach himself piano. His brother Louie introduced him to stride piano, […]

San Murata

ARTIST San Murata is an Ontario-based painter living in a historic small town near Toronto. Born in Japan, he graduated from the University of Musashi in Tokyo with a degree in Economics in 1964. In 1968, he travelled to Canada to ‘have a look around’, and liked it so much that he decided to stay. […]