In Tom Pierson’s live concert anything can happen, but one thing always happens--great music.

Whether playing her own originals or audience-friendly standards, she delivered an accomplished, complete sense of jazz on every tune.

A tight sextet with a sense of the classics and their own singular view of how a solid rhythm section can best work with a front line that has punch and energy.

Sinking into the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim with such talented musicians is a rare treat.

Yosuke Yamashita might be one of Japan’s best-known jazz pianists, but he still likes to mix it up.

Nishiyama studied classical music when she was young, as do many jazz converts, but she secretly loved heavy metal music.

To see just how deeply jazz is rooted in Japan, you need only go to the annual Asagaya Jazz Streets. The area of western Tokyo with a laidback vibe, small yakitori grills and drinking spots opens its streets, and interiors, to jazz once a year for the past two decades.

For the Jazz Street weekend, the gym was hung with spectacular visualizations of what jazz looks like.

She radiates musicality, and after each song, the feeling is of having been steeped in a deeply musical experience.

The Kanoko Kitajima trio is a young, hard-driving bop-based trio who plays jazz like they just fell in love with it yesterday.