Critics Praise the Big Band Jazz of Miho Hazama

December 2019

The New York Times recently named Dancer in Nowhere, the third album from Tokyo-born composer Miho Hazama (挾間 美帆) to its 2019 Best of Jazz list. The album (which also earned accolades from DownBeat Magazine and The Japan Times) features Hazama’s 13-piece band and combines strings, horns, vibraphone, piano, bass, drums and vocals into an experimental fusion of big band jazz and classical music.

Hazama studied classical composition at Kunitachi College of Music and jazz at Manhattan School of Music; among her influences are the work of jazz icons like Maria Schneider and Vince Mendoza. She has cultivated a compositional style that layers lush harmonies over constantly evolving rhythms and dynamics.

She released her debut album Journey to Journey in 2012; the project won her the Jazz JAPAN rising star award and gained her early acclaim in the world of large-ensemble jazz; in 2015, she was awarded the BMI Foundation Parker Composition Prize as well. Her compositions - as well as her skillful arrangements and orchestrations of work by other composers - have been performed by the NHK Symphony Orchestra and Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2019, she became chief conductor for the Danish Radio Big Band.

Watch a behind-the-scenes video about the recording of Dancer in Nowhere and read more about her work in The Japan Times, DownBeat Magazine, The New York Times, and at mihohazama.com.