Music

Alan Kondo

Alan Kondo was the first lead singer of the Asia Minors, an Asian Canadian top 40s rock band in the 1960s in Toronto. After leaving the band, he went on to study film at UCLA under Jerry Lewis, and became an editor for Visual Communications in Los Angeles. He edited Hito Hata, the first Asian […]

Teresa Kobayashi

Teresa Kobayashi is a master koto player, the daughter of renowned koto sensei Miyoko Kobayashi. She also plays the shamisen and shakuhachi and danced odori for 27 years. As a child, she was primarily interested in dance, and began learning the Hanayagi style of nihonbuyo (odori dance) at the age of six. However, she found […]

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 […]

The Singing Knights

The Singing Knights were an Asian Canadian folk band in Toronto in the 1960s and 1970s. They were formed by the Chung family, and at one time featured Garry Kawasaki and Terry Watada. They toured Ontario, and once performed for Prince Charles of England.

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 […]

Ohama

Tona Walt Ohama is a composer and performer of electronic synth music who records music in an isolated underground studio on his family’s potato farm in rural Alberta. He has played synthesizers since 1975, when he bought his first monophonic synthesizer, the A.R.P. Axxe, at the age of fifteen. He has been called ‘Alberta’s Best […]

Number One Son

Number One Son was a Vancouver Asian Canadian folk-rock band. Its members included Martin Kobayakawa, Kuan Foo, Sean Gunn, and later Terry Watada. They released two albums: Number One Son and Hockeynight in Chinatown.

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 […]

Jamie Parker

Jamie Parker is a concert pianist with an extensive career both as a soloist and as part of chamber ensembles, including the renowned Gryphon Trio. Born in British Columbia, he studied at the Vancouver Academy of Music and the University of British Columbia, and continued on to The Juilliard School. He is now a teacher […]

Masako Yamaguchi

Masako Yamaguchi was a koto player from the Kansai region of Japan. She was trained in the Ikuta style of koto playing, her principal teachers being Miyako Kyakuden, Kinrei Shizuki, and Soyo Nakamura, and was herself for decades an important koto teacher in Toronto. She also received her BA in English Literature from Kansai University […]

Vernon Hakkaku

Vernon Hakkaku was a well-known piano accompanist for many Nisei singers during and after the Second World War. He was known for having a distinctively Japanese style which suited the Nisei singers well. Terry Watada recalls: ‘Vernon Hakkaku was a postal worker in Toronto. His house in Cabbagetown was sparsely furnished, with only a baby […]

Gordon Hashimoto

Gordon Hashimoto is a Montreal-based editor, filmmaker and musician. As a student at Concordia University, he variously produced, wrote, directed, and edited a number of experimental short films; as a professional in the filmmaking industry, he works primarily as a picture editor or assistant editor, on such productions as Rene Levesque, Fries with That, and […]

Mariko Sato

Mariko Sato is a Tokyo-born concert pianist, accompanist, and teacher based in Montreal. She immigrated to Canada at the age of 18 to study music at Laval University in Quebec City, eventually earning both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. She has gone on to an extensive teaching and performance career, performing on three continents and […]

Fujiko Imajishi

Japanese-born Fujiko Imajishi has made her home in Canada since 1968. After studies with Lorand Fenyves, Ruggiero Ricci, Franco Gulli and the Hungarian Quartet she went on to win both the Montreal and Toronto Symphony Competitions. She is concertmaster of the Esprit Orchestra and until 2009 was concertmaster of the National Ballet of Canada, and […]

Jeannette Hirasawa Moore

Flutist Jeannette Hirasawa Moore has appeared as soloist with the Toronto Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Ensemble Sir Ernest MacMillan and Hart House Orchestra. Originally from Hamilton ON, Hirasawa Moore lived in Toronto where she performed as principal flute of the Toronto Pops Orchestra, Toronto Operetta Theatre, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Hamilton Philharmonic, and Toronto Philharmonic. […]