Jazz in July: Aya Sekine and Guest Artists

Japanese Jazz pianist Aya Sekine is no stranger to the Singapore music scene. She has been based in the Singapore for the past 15 years, and is known to be a highly passionate and eclectic jazz pianist, constantly pushing creative boundaries. Apart from performing prolifically, she has also been integral to the scene as an educator and a strong advocate for jazz and the community. In this special performance, Sekine asked three of her musician friends—bassist John Koh, vocalist Dawn Ho, and saxophonist Edmund Wuu—to pick songs they think suit Sekine the best, from standards to freestyle improvisations.

Aya Sekine is a Japanese jazz pianist who has been actively performing worldwide over the past two decades. As a performer, she is best known for her soulful and dynamic style of swinging jazz and improvisation that is heavily influenced by the bebop and straight-ahead era in the jazz history, but her true uniqueness comes from how she liberates herself when expressing by embracing many different types of music, being open for wide spectrum of collaborations with artists in Singapore and around the world.

Her recent work includes her own trio project The Jazz Party featuring the sought-after young jazz practitioners Ben Poh (bass) and Ting Wei Yap (drums) at Esplanade’s Jazz in July series, an audio-visual-movement performance with multi-disciplinary artist Angie Seah at ArtScience Museum, and a commissioned composition project Pin品 for The Pipa Quartet at SOTA Concert Hall. She composes and performs as a member of soul/jazz group L.A.B (Listen And Believe), and a soundpainting collective Erik Satay & The Kampong Arkestra led by Australian educator/saxophonist Tim O’Dwyer. She also expands her collaborations to her homeland Japan, where she tours twice a year to improvise with as many artists as she can, at as many venues as possible to expand her capacity of artistic expressions.

Also known as an integral part of Singapore’s music scene she has been the resident programmer of Blu Jaz Cafe since 2006, where she continually raises the bar for quality non-mainstream live entertainment. She is a director of multifaceted music programming enterprise Bon Goût Music, and recently incorporated founder/director a new organization We Love Jazz (Singapore) Limited which envisions to strengthen the community of jazz, improvised music and other improvised art forms in Singapore.