Yoshio Suzuki Birthday Special

March 24, 2026

Bon Courage

Yoshio Suzuki 鈴木良雄 – piano, bass

Itsumi Komano駒野逸美 – trombone

Fumika Asari浅利史花 – guitar

Akiyoshi Shimizu清水昭好 – bass

Yoichi Okabe岡部洋一 – drums, percussion

Not many jazz musicians keep playing at the top of their game until the age of eighty years old. But Yoshio Suzuki does. He decided to celebrate his 80th birthday by doing what he loves most—playing with great musicians. The band’s bass, trombone, and guitar players’ ages hardly add up to Suzuki’s! But once they started playing, the ages hardly mattered. The band kicked into two lovely sets of classic jazz, polished to a gleam. 

Whether playing an original from one of Suzuki’s 20+ leader albums or dipping into a classic song like “I Love You,” juiced up with Latin rhythms from Okabe, the group delved into exquisite melodies and complex harmonies. It was an evening of soloing, too, with cool, tensile solos from everyone. Ranging from blues to bossa nova to jazz standards, the members' different approaches created a wonderful energy on all the tunes. They leaped into delicate songs with a lightness of touch and huge depth of feeling, and took the bolder songs with authority.

Suzuki stayed on piano, except for one tune in the second set, leaving the bass duties to the tasteful, able Shimizu. Suzuki’s mainly on bass for his recordings and most live shows, so it was a surprise to see he didn’t bring one along. Instead, he borrowed Shimizu’s bass for  “I’ll Close My Eyes.” The steady rhythm from Okabe let Asari and Komano show off their tremendous soloing skills, but it also let Suzuki sit back into his comfort zone on bass. With Shimizu taking a one-song break, the quartet let Okabe open up on rhythm.

Shimizu took the bass back for the rest of the set. Next up was “O Grande Amor,” the delicate, deeply felt Antonio Carlos Jobim number. Suzuki’s piano intro set the emotional palette and the other musicians soloed. Komano followed with a pristine melody line and yet another tasteful solo. Asari added hypnotic guitar backing and took a long single-note solo that was her best of the evening. It seemed like she was two guitarists in one. Like Komano, she doesn’t rush, but moves easily through the solos without losing the sustained passion at the heart of the song.

After the mid-tempo ballads at the beginning and middle of the two sets, Suzuki took them into the blues on the last song, which let them really cook. The balance in the band between Okabe and Suzuki, who have worked together for years, and the younger Asari, Komano, and Shimizu was particularly intriguing.  And that’s what Suzuki is so good at doing—bringing the right musicians together into a fresh unit that feels like they’ve been playing together forever. The two wonderful, heartfelt sets were a fitting celebration for Suzuki turning 80, an important milestone in Japan. But frankly, any jazz musician would have been happy to have such a great performance at any age.