Live From Japan, volume I

Temple University Jazz Band
Terell Stafford, director

Live From Japan, volume 1 will be available for streaming and download on all major platforms February 6, 2025. Physical CD sales will be available via Bandcamp.

Aspiring jazz musicians can learn plenty in a classroom, from fundamentals to virtuosic technique to the camaraderie and collaborative spark that comes from performing with classmates. For Temple University students, there is even more to be gleaned within blocks of the college’s Philadelphia campus, where young players can test their mettle alongside peers and elders in jam sessions on local stages.

But there are invaluable lessons that can’t be taught so close to home. During Spring Break 2025, the members of the Temple University Jazz Band were granted the rare opportunity to embark on a five-day tour of Japan, the first in the band’s history. The band had made its Japanese debut in front of a raucous crowd of 2,500, including counterparts from Temple University’s Japan Campus, as they joined the Waseda University High Society Orchestra for its 69^th recital concert at Hitotsubashi Hall. The whirlwind trek culminated in a two-set concert at the renowned Tokyo nightclub Akasaka B-flat, captured in all its globetrotting glory on Live from Japan.

Live from Japan showcases a high-energy, vigorously swinging performance by the big band, its chemistry forged in the classroom but strengthened by the bonds that only a grueling foreign tour can build. That was exactly why Terell Stafford, director of jazz studies and chair of instrumental studies at Temple’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, worked so tirelessly to make the trip a reality.

It wasn’t easy – especially given the fact that his original plans were derailed by the COVID pandemic in 2020. Stafford, an acclaimed trumpeter and bandleader in his own right as well as a longtime member of the Grammy Award-winning Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, is no stranger to the Land of the Rising Sun, having visited and performed there many times over the course of his 30-year career. Journeying halfway around the world with a small band of one’s contemporaries or a well-established big band, however, is a very different prospect from shepherding an ensemble of 21 young men and women, many of them leaving the country for the first time in their lives.

“We had a great time,” Stafford enthused. “It was an unbelievable experience for me, having been to Japan so many times, to see the students react to everything with fresh eyes. To see how beat down they were because of jetlag, but knowing they’d have to work through it and be professional. It taught them a lot of life lessons, and I was inspired by them.”

For drummer Maria Marmarou, the Japan tour served as the culmination of her seven years of study at Temple, encompassing her undergraduate and master’s degrees and her professional studies certificate. It was her most extensive tour with the TUJB, with which she’d previously only traveled as far as the American Midwest. “It was nice to experience what touring and hanging with a band would really be like,” she said. It was the first time the band had spent that much time with each other, and I feel like every time we performed it got better – especially after the first night, when we had a rehearsal right off the plane and it was pretty rough mentally and musically.”

The band received some useful guidance from alto saxophonist Ray Kaneko. While the tour was an eye-opening experience for the vast majority of the band, for Kaneko it was a homecoming. A native of Tokyo, Kaneko is a second-generation jazz musician. His father, Ken Kaneko, is a bassist on the Tokyo jazz scene who stepped with much-needed logistical assistance for the tour, including the suggestion of a venue for the climactic concert.

Ray Kaneko returned to Tokyo with one special souvenir from his adopted home (he plans to return to Philly in the fall to pursue his masters). Nervous about his first stint as the band’s lead alto, he was touched and comforted when his mentor, legendary saxophonist and longtime Temple faculty member Dick Oatts, handed Kaneko his own instrument. “I was struggling, and he gave me his saxophone,” Kaneko related, emotion choking his voice. “So I played his horn, which was a very, very special moment for me. My teacher was not there, but his horn and his legacy were with me.”

All of those emotions and experiences can be heard in the spirited set of music that makes up Live from Japan. “It all came out in the final concert,” Stafford said. The album kicks off in vigorous fashion with “Squatty Roo,” written for the Duke Ellington Orchestra by sax legend Johnny Hodges and arranged by bassist and bandleader John Clayton, a constant in the TUJB book.

The setlist includes three other Ellington classics, in David Berger’s transcriptions: “Jack the Bear,” featuring an eloquent turn by bassist Graham Kozak; “I Didn’t Know About You,” with a delicate vocal by Jacquee Paul; and a showstopping rendition of “Black and Tan Fantasy.” Don Menza’s “I Just Found Out About Love” is a lively workout for the whole band, with Paul’s punchy delivery of the celebratory lyric, while Bob Mintzer’s stunning arrangement of Herbie Hancock’s “Eye of the Hurricane” is borrowed from the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra’s book, a vital resource for the Temple program.

The album’s centerpiece is the breathtaking “Fantasia,” written specifically for the band by Tokyo native and Temple alum Yoichi Uzeki. An intricate chamber piece blurring the lines between classical and jazz influences, “Fantasia” was composed after extensive discussions between Uzeki and Stafford about the particular strengths of this iteration of the TUJB.

In addition to the musicians and the material, the other essential component of any live album is the audience, and the TUJB was met by as enthusiastic and adoring a crowd as it could have hoped for, adding immeasurably to this album’s vitality. “Japanese audiences don't take anything for granted because they don't get to hear the music as much,” Stafford explained. “It was great for the students to feel all that love.”

Stafford’s sentiment was echoed by Marmarou, who exulted, “They loooved us. The audiences were going insane. They were so happy that we were there, and I think they loved every second of the concert. Everything that we played seemed to touch them. I don't think I've experienced that before.”

That, for students just beginning to explore a life in music, is what a tour like this is all about. Experience it for yourself on Live from Japan

-- Shaun Brady
Philadelphia, July 2025

Temple University Jazz Band

Terell Stafford, director

SAXOPHONE
Ray Kaneko, alto
Allen Green, alto
Evan Kappelman, tenor
Anthony Singer, tenor
Zachary Spondike, baritone

TRUMPET
John Brunozzi
Nick Dugo
Jesse Deems
Banks Sapnar
Levi Rozek

TROMBONE
Drew Sedlacsik
Scott Alberti
Tim Zettlemoyer
John Kim, bass trombone

RHYTHM
Anthony Aldissi, piano
Jake Miller, guitar
Graham Kozak, bass
Maria Marmarou, drums

VOCALS
Jacquee Paul

Recorded March 9, 2025 at B-flat Jazz Dining – Akasaka, Tokyo, Japan.

BCM&D Founder and Executive Producer: Robert Stroker
Producer: David Pasbrig
Recording Engineer: Ken Kaneko
Mix Engineer: David Pasbrig
Mastering Engineer: David Glasser, Airshow Mastering
Photos: Tsubasa Fujikawa Berg
Design: Pao Navarro

All rights in this sound recording, artwork, texts and translations reserved. Unauthorized public performance, broadcasting and copying of this compact disc prohibited. 

© and (P) 2025 BCM&D Records, Boyer College of Music and Dance, Temple University, 1715 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122