Shunzo Ohno

Shunzo Ohno drew formative lessons from stints alongside Art Blakey, Machito, and Gil Evans, then overcame a near-fatal car crash and a throat-cancer diagnosis that imperiled his embouchure, forging a fifty-year career defined by resolve. His sound threads together his Japanese roots, straight-ahead jazz, salsa, fusion, jazz-funk, and hip-hop, illustrated by Grammy-winning sessions with Machito and Evans, partnerships with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Buster Williams, and a string of leader dates stretching from Falter Out (1973) to Dreamer (2018). Among his most recognized pieces are the expansive “Bubbles” and the resolute “Musashi,” which captured the grand prize at the 2013 International Songwriting Competition.

Born in Gifu Prefecture, Ohno began on trombone at thirteen, switched to trumpet at seventeen, and earned his earliest recording credits while still in his early twenties, backing vocalist Hideko Fujiwara and drummers Takeshi Inomata and Sadakuzu Tabata. He launched his own discography with the self-penned Falter Out (1973) for Victor in Japan, then joined Art Blakey’s touring band and settled in New York. Through the remainder of the 1970s he issued Something’s Coming (1975) and Bubbles (1976) on East Wind plus Quarter Moon (1979) on Electric Bird, and contributed to dates led by drummer Norman Connors, saxophonist Carter Jefferson, and arranger-pianist David Matthews; one Connors date spotlighted a reading of “Bubbles” with Jefferson and Ohno. In the following decade he helmed two further Electric Bird albums, Antares (1980) and Manhattan Blue (1987), yet devoted the greater share of his time to Machito’s Latin-jazz orchestra and Gil Evans’s ensembles, participating in the Grammy-winning Machito and His Salsa Big Band 1982 and Evans’s Bud & Bird while also appearing with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Larry Coryell.

A severe automobile accident that damaged his lips and teeth, followed by stage-four throat cancer, each required extended rehabilitation and technical readjustment, yet neither halted his progress. Between these setbacks he recorded on Buster Williams’s Something More and David Byrne’s Rei Momo, and released Maya (1991) with his own quintet. After prevailing over cancer he issued Poetry of Japan (2000) on Absord, then began releasing independently, delivering All in One (2013), ReNew (2016), and Dreamer (2018). All in One contained “Musashi,” whose victory at the International Songwriting Competition made Ohno the first Japanese composer to receive the grand prize. During the same span he was profiled in the documentary short Never Defeated: The Shunzo Ohno Story, narrated by Buster Williams.