Blue Note Jazz Festival in Japan 2025
Day 1 – Saturday, September 27
‣ Norah Jones – Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, pianist, and Blue Note Records icon
‣Take 6 with Miho Hazama Jazz Orchestra – Acclaimed gospel a cappella group meets orchestral jazz arrangements
‣ Don Was & Pan Detroit Ensemble – Led by the Blue Note Records president and multi-instrumentalist
‣Amaro Freitas – Brazilian pianist celebrated for his rhythmic, improvisational style
‣Valerie June – Americana artist praised by Bob Dylan for her distinctive voice and songwriting
Day 2 – Sunday, September 28
‣Ne-Yo – Three-time Grammy Award-winning R&B singer
‣Tower of Power – Funk and soul band with a signature horn section
‣Daichi Miura – Japanese vocalist and dancer known for his powerful stage presence
‣Incognito – UK jazz-funk pioneers led by Jean-Paul 'Bluey' Maunick
‣ SOIL& 'PIMP' SESSIONS with Ryosuke Nagaoka – Jazz ensemble
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Metropolis Japan
3 days ago
- Metropolis Japan
Blue Note Jazz Festival in Japan 2025
The Blue Note Jazz Festival returns to Tokyo for its second year at Ariake Arena, bringing two days of exceptional live performances that bridge jazz, soul, funk and R&B. Since its debut in New York City in 2011, the festival has become a global celebration of music, attracting top international talent. Tokyo audiences can expect an outstanding mix of Grammy winners, jazz innovators and genre-defying artists. Day 1 – Saturday, September 27 ‣ Norah Jones – Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, pianist, and Blue Note Records icon ‣Take 6 with Miho Hazama Jazz Orchestra – Acclaimed gospel a cappella group meets orchestral jazz arrangements ‣ Don Was & Pan Detroit Ensemble – Led by the Blue Note Records president and multi-instrumentalist ‣Amaro Freitas – Brazilian pianist celebrated for his rhythmic, improvisational style ‣Valerie June – Americana artist praised by Bob Dylan for her distinctive voice and songwriting Day 2 – Sunday, September 28 ‣Ne-Yo – Three-time Grammy Award-winning R&B singer ‣Tower of Power – Funk and soul band with a signature horn section ‣Daichi Miura – Japanese vocalist and dancer known for his powerful stage presence ‣Incognito – UK jazz-funk pioneers led by Jean-Paul 'Bluey' Maunick ‣ SOIL& 'PIMP' SESSIONS with Ryosuke Nagaoka – Jazz ensemble Details
Japan Today
07-08-2025
- Japan Today
How true to life is Brendon Fraser's movie about Japanese rental families?
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24 In the decade-plus that SoraNews24 has been around, we've never once mentioned Brendan Fraser. This isn't because of any long-standing beef between us, but simply a result of the Academy Award-winning actor not having any major connections to Japan-related happenings during that interval. So to all our loyal readers who also happen to be fans of Mr Fraser, we apologize for the wait, which is now over thanks to the release of the trailer for "Rental Family." An upcoming release from Los Angeles-based Searchlight Pictures, "Rental Family" stars Fraser as a foreigner living in Japan, eking out a living acting in commercials. When that line of income starts to dry up, he finds a job with a 'rental family' agency, where customers pay to have someone play the role of a family member or friend. This isn't such a far-fetched premise. There's an entire ecosystem within the Japanese show business industry of foreign resident actors who specialize in bit roles in commercials, movies, TV dramas, and historical reenactment programs that need non-Japanese on-screen cast members (the live-action adaptation of manga "Thermae Romae," for example. has a scene set in an ancient Roman bathhouse with dozens of non-Japanese extras). The size of these parts, though, means that the actors aren't making A-lister money, so Fraser's character needing to take on an unorthodox job to make ends meet is pretty plausible. Likewise, Japan, really does have rental family agencies. They first started attracting significant attention in the early 2010s, and we've even tried their services out for ourselves, such as when our reporters rented a middle-aged man or sister (two sisters, actually). That said, judging from the trailer, it's debatable whether "Rental Family," directed by professionally mononymous Hikari, who was born in Japan and moved to the U.S. after high school, is attempting to accurately depict the status of rental family agencies in contemporary Japanese society, or whether its main goal is to tell a dramatic and emotional story with Fraser's character's job as its framing device. For example. a major plotline seems to involve a Japanese woman hiring Fraser's character to pretend to be the father of her daughter, who appears to be of mixed Japanese/Caucasian ancestry. 'This girl needs a father,' Fraser's boss tells him, and when he introduces himself to the child as such, in a public place, she shouts 'I hate you!' and storms off. 'She hates me,' Fraser laments to his boss, who replies 'That's what being a parent is.' Now, it's definitely true that most countries don't have rental family services, and the obvious reason is that the concept would be seen as just too weird. But while the idea isn't too weird for Japanese society as a whole, renting a family member is still considered unusual by most Japanese people. There's no real pushback against it, since it's seen as quirky but harmless fun for those who're intrigued by the proposition, and you could argue Japan is already somewhat softened regarding paid quasi-social relationships, what with hostess/host bars having been a thing for so long. However, hiring a stranger to pretend to be your child's father, especially as an attempt to address clearly severe psychological issues stemming from the parent's absence, is something that most Japanese people would say is a cruel disservice to the child, and not the sort of benefit that rental family agencies promote themselves as providing. Yes, you can rent a 'dad' in Japan, as Conan O'Brien famously did during his time in the country, but again, the service is targeted at adults wanting a fatherly figure for role play, not as a way to address the emotional trauma of a minor. Similarly, Japan's 'rental grandma' service is more about the sage wisdom, traditional skills, and calming presence that a woman of advanced age can provide, not necessarily acting as a substitute for an actual familial connection. So what about the two scenes where Fraser appears to have been hired to play the role of a groom at a wedding, one a Western-style ceremony and one a traditional Japanese one? Surely that's got to be crossing some sort of marriage-fraud line, right? Except, no, those are actually possible scenarios, though maybe not the most plausible. That's because in Japan, wedding ceremonies, whether performed at a church or temple, aren't legally binding. The only way to make your marriage official in the eyes of the law is to submit your marriage registration paperwork to your local city hall or ward office. So as long as the chapel or temple is OK with it, you could, in theory, hold a wedding ceremony, and a reception too, as a purely for-fun thing, perhaps if circumstances mean you're unlikely to ever get legally married to an actual life partner. Sure, it'd involve considerable expense, and there's no guarantee that all of your friends and family members would be onboard and happy to attend, but there's no legal barrier to doing it if you want to have the wedding experience without actually getting married. Oh, and you also have to give "Rental Family" credit for making sure to pick a suitably niche console to be the system of choice of the lonely man who hires Fraser to pretend to be his buddy. ▼ Your true friends are the ones who'll still hang out and play Dreamcast games with you in 2025 (but they'd be even better friends if they helped keep any snacks off of the disc drive cover). The trailer also includes a few shots of the Shibuya Scramble intersection, but I'm pretty sure the U.N. recently passed a resolution mandating the landmark be shown at least once in any foreign-produced movie with scenes set in Tokyo. The more aggravating thing is when the preview has someone saying, ostensibly to Fraser, 'You could live in this country for a hundred years, and there will still be things you won't understand.' Yeah, Japanese culture has its initially confusing quirks, just like any country's culture does, but playing up the inscrutability of the Japanese psyche is a pretty tired cliche, especially considering how many of Japan's real-world foreign residents effectively adapt to the local social norms way before they hit the century mark of living here, and even more especially when the line is paired with visuals showing people waiting at a train crossing, which doesn't exactly make one say 'Ah, Japan…so mysterious!' ▼ Granted, the barriers do tend to go down earlier in Japan than in some other countries, but 'Wait here so you don't get hit by a train' isn't so hard for non-Japanese people to wrap their heads around. So you could say that it's kind of a mixed bag in terms of how much of a window into modern Japanese life "Rental Family" is going to be, but that might not really be its intention anyway. Fraser's character himself even says 'You know, sometimes it's OK to pretend' as the trailer wraps up, so 100-percent real-world accuracy probably isn't the goal, and if nothing else it looks like it's going to be a story that's both introspective and encouraging of empathy, neither of which are bad emotional spaces for a movie to take its audience. "Rental Family" opens in theaters in North America on November 21. Source, images: YouTube/SearchlightPictures Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- We tried Tokyo's 'rent a middle-aged Japanese man' service, and it was awesome! -- Conan O'Brien in Japan episode features Toto toilets, Harajuku, a rented family and Conan Town -- Rental grandma service growing in Japan, can help cook or break up with boyfriends External Link © SoraNews24
Japan Today
07-08-2025
- Japan Today
Eddie Palmieri, pioneering Latin jazz musician and Grammy winner, dies at 88
By SIGAL RATNER-ARIAS Eddie Palmieri, the avant-garde musician who was one of the most innovative artists of rumba and Latin jazz, has died. He was 88. Fania Records announced Palmieri's death Wednesday evening. Palmieri's daughter Gabriela told The New York Times that her father died earlier that day at his home in New Jersey after 'an extended illness.' The pianist, composer and bandleader was the first Latino to win a Grammy Award and would win seven more over a career that spanned nearly 40 albums. Palmieri was born in New York's Spanish Harlem on December 15, 1936, at a time when music was seen as a way out of the ghetto. He began studying the piano at an early age, like his famous brother Charlie Palmieri, but at age 13, he began playing timbales in his uncle's orchestra, overcome with a desire for the drums. He eventually abandoned the instrument and went back to the playing piano. 'I'm a frustrated percussionist, so I take it out on the piano,' the musician once said in his website biography. His first Grammy win came in 1975 for the album 'The Sun of Latin Music,' and he kept releasing music into his 80s, performing through the coronavirus pandemic via livestreams. In a 2011 interview with The Associated Press, when asked if he had anything important left to do, he responded with his usual humility and good humor: 'Learning to play the piano well. ... Being a piano player is one thing. Being a pianist is another.' Palmieri dabbled in tropical music as a pianist during the 1950s with the Eddie Forrester Orchestra. He later joined Johnny Seguí's band and Tito Rodríguez's before forming his own band in 1961, La Perfecta, alongside trombonist Barry Rogers and singer Ismael Quintana. La Perfecta was the first to feature a trombone section instead of trumpets, something rarely seen in Latin music. With its unique sound, the band quickly joined the ranks of Machito, Tito Rodríguez, and other Latin orchestras of the time. Palmieri produced several albums on the Alegre and Tico Records labels, including the 1971 classic 'Vámonos pa'l monte,' with his brother Charlie as guest organist. Charlie Palmieri died in 1988. Eddie's unconventional approach would surprise critics and fans again that year with the release of 'Harlem River Drive,' in which he fused Black and Latin styles to produce a sound that encompassed elements of salsa, funk, soul, and jazz. Later, in 1974, he recorded 'The Sun of Latin Music' with a young Lalo Rodríguez. The album became the first Latin production to win a Grammy. In 1975, he recorded the album 'Eddie Palmieri & Friends in Concert, Live at the University of Puerto Rico,' considered by many fans to be a salsa gem. In the 1980s, he won two more Grammy Awards, for the albums 'Palo pa' rumba' (1984) and 'Solito' (1985). In 1987, he recorded salsa singer Tony Vega on the album 'La verdad,' and in 1992, he introduced the vocalist La India to the salsa world with the production 'Llegó La India vía Eddie Palmieri.' In 1998, he released 'El rumbero del piano,' in which he once again explored the aggressive salsa that had always characterized him. Palmieri released the album 'Masterpiece' in 2000, which teamed him with Tito Puente, who died that year. It was a hit with critics and won two Grammy Awards. The album was also chosen as the most outstanding production of the year by the National Foundation for Popular Culture of Puerto Rico. During his long career, he participated in concerts and recordings with the Fania All-Stars and Tico All-Stars, standing out as a composer, arranger, producer, and orchestra director. In 1988, the Smithsonian Institute recorded two of Palmieri's concerts for the catalog of the National Museum of American History in Washington. Yale University in 2002 awarded him the Chubb Fellowship Award, an award usually reserved for international heads of state, in recognition of his work in building communities through music. In 2005, he made his debut on National Public Radio as the host of the program 'Caliente,' which was carried by more than 160 radio stations nationwide. He worked with renowned musicians such as timbalero Nicky Marrero, bassist Israel 'Cachao' López, trumpeter Alfredo 'Chocolate' Armenteros, trombonist Lewis Khan, and Puerto Rican bassist Bobby Valentín. In 2010, Palmieri said he felt a bit lonely musically due to the deaths of many of the rumberos with whom he enjoyed playing. As a musical ambassador, he brought salsa and Latin jazz to places as far afield as North Africa, Australia, Asia and Europe, among others. Former Associated Press Writer Sigal Ratner-Arias is the primary author of this obituary. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
