Music

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 […]

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, […]

Lemon Creek Harmonica Band

The Lemon Creek Harmonica Band was a long-enduring and well-loved musical group, a legacy of popular harmonica bands of the 1930s and 1940s. It was formed during the internment at the Lemon Creek internment camp by a group of young Nisei men who needed a diversion from internment life and was led by Junji Ikeno […]

Noriko Kim Kobayashi

Noriko Kobayashi is a musician. She earned a M.A. degree in Ethnomusicology from the University of British Columbia, in addition to a B.A. in Music and Psychology from U.B.C. She also earned a music degree from Capilano College in classical voice studies and is also a published author on the subject of taiko. Prior to […]

Dana LaCroix

Dana LaCroix, born April 1, 1966, is a Canadian-born singer and songwriter. She has released six roots and blues-influenced studio albums that incorporate elements of pop, roots-rock, country and folk music. LaCroix was born in Toronto, Canada, to Naomi LaCroix (née: Tanaka), a registered nurse and Pat LaCroix, a Canadian musician and photographer who toured […]

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. […]

E. Kage

E. Kage is a Taiko artist/performer and a digital audio artist. Born in Japan growing up in Canada, they embraced the art of Taiko as a way to express their empowerment as a mixed race queer youth. Since the 1980s they co-founded several Taiko/music groups touring parts of Europe and North America. Their digital audio […]

Jon Kimura Parker

Jon Kimura Parker is a pianist who regularly performs as a soloist with orchestras around the world. After studying piano with his mother, Keiko Parker, and his uncle, Edward Parker, as a child, he went on to train at the Vancouver Academy of Music, the University of British Columbia, the Victoria Conservatory, the Banff Centre, […]

Roy K. Kiyooka

One of the first Japanese Canadian artists to achieve prominence on a national and international scale, Roy Kiyooka began his art practice as a painter, later turned his focus to poetry and photography, and engaged in a variety of trans-disciplinary, experimental, and community-building work in the Canadian arts scene. A Nisei, Kiyooka was born in […]

Terry Watada

Terry Watada is a poet, novelist, short story writer, historian, playwright, columnist, essayist, and music composer. He has published five poetry collections, three novels, a short story collection, two manga, two histories on the Buddhist Church in Canada, and two children’s biographies. Significant titles include Kuroshio: The Blood of Foxes (Arsenal, Vancouver 2007), novel, The […]

John Endo Greenaway

John Endo Greenaway is a self-described hapa-sansei who lives and works in the Metro Vancouver area. Born in London, England to a Japanese Canadian mother and an English/Irish Canadian father, he has spent the last 55 years trying to figure out where he fits in. He will let you know when he does. In the […]