Yasuaki Shimizu

Saxophone, Bach and Kakashi

Yasuaki Shimizu was born on August 9, 1954 in Shimada, Shizuoka Prefecture, and has lived in London, Paris and Tokyo. He grew up in the countryside near Mt. Fuji, learned several instruments and took up saxophone around age eleven, influenced by radio, Ornette Coleman and Rahsaan Roland Kirk; he moved to Tokyo in the mid-1970s, played several gigs a day on the jazz scene, and says he burned out in the late 1970s. He recorded saxophone on hundreds of studio albums, including for Taeko Ohnuki, Minako Yoshida and Seigen Ono, and worked closely with members of Yellow Magic Orchestra.

His first solo album Get You came in 1978, then Mariah (1979) and Far East Express (1979), Berlin (1980) and IQ 179 (1981). The band Mariah, with Takayuki Hijikata, Masanori Sasaji and Hideo Yamaki, made albums from 1980 to 1983, ending with Utakata no Hibi, and the Saxophonettes began as a one-man band in 1983, becoming a real quintet in 2006. Kakashi was released in Japan in 1982 and was, he said, a record that had an unexpected lack of popularity; he shopped it and Utakata no Hibi around the industry after moving to Paris in 1985 with little response. He divided his time between Paris and London from 1985 to 1991, and made Subliminal (1987), Dementos (1988) and Aduna (1989, with Wasis Diop).

In the 1990s he recorded Bach's Cello Suites on tenor saxophone in unusual spaces, an underground quarry, a mine and an Italian palazzo; Bach Box won a best production award at the 39th Japan Record Awards in 1997. Pentatonica (2007) arranged Ethiopian traditional music and the Goldberg Variations (2015) were for five saxophones and four contrabasses. He also scored films including Cutie and the Boxer (2013) and NHK dramas. Palto Flats reissued Utakata no Hibi in 2015, Kakashi with WRWTFWW in 2017, and released Kiren, recorded in 1984 as the intended follow-up to Kakashi, in 2022; Pitchfork gave it 8.1.

He toured Europe with Ray Kunimoto in 2018, and in March 2025 made a sold-out first North American tour with dates in Brooklyn at National Sawdust on March 21, Chicago on March 24, Toronto on March 26 and San Francisco on March 31. Yaz Lancaster wrote in I Care If You Listen that it was a reintroduction and well-earned recognition. Japanese Wikipedia notes that Kakashi has been reappraised and found a following among younger listeners in Europe and North America.