Touring performers never forget the first time they get booked at one of their favorite venues. Especially when it turns out that they can’t work there.
Such was the case in March of 2020, when jazz pianist and composer Yoko Miwa (www.yokomiwa.com) was set to play at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach. COVID-19 intervened, like it did through much of life during that year, robbing Miwa and her trio of their initial debut there.
Yet the classically trained Japanese pianist has returned to the scene of that crime against her almost every year since to display her unique combination of touch, tone, technique and taste. Her trio, with acoustic upright bassist Will Slater and her drumming husband Scott Goulding, plays the Arts Garage once again on Feb. 21.
“I think this is the fourth or fifth time we’ve played there since that cancellation,” Miwa says by phone from Boston, her longtime adopted hometown and workplace. “I believe we also did late 2021, but maybe not 2022, before doing every year since. We really like the venue, and coming to Florida, because Boston can get very cold in the winter.”
The 55-year-old pianist’s place of residence isn’t just because it’s one of America’s top cities, especially from a musical standpoint. Miwa has been in Beantown since 1997 after auditioning to attend its jazz launching pad, the Berklee College of Music, on a lark as a classical music student at the Koyo Conservatory of Music in her hometown of Kobe, Japan. She not only aced the audition, but earned a full scholarship, resulting in studies there with Joanne Brackeen and Ray Santisi.
“It all changed my life,” says Miwa. “At my audition, I played ‘Bye-Ya’ by Thelonious Monk. My teacher at Koyo, Phillip Strange, was American. He’s a really great pianist, and he chose that song for me.”
Miwa’s jazz technique had initially been encouraged and honed in Japan by organist and instructor Minoru Ozone. Miwa performed at his nightclub and worked as a piano teacher at his music school, and only intended to stay and study in Boston for a year when she arrived. Twenty-nine years later, she’s still there, with the last 15 as an associate professor in the Berklee piano department.
“I have around 30 students a week,” she says, “and with some of them, I think to myself, ‘This person is really going to be something special.’”
Gifted jazz vocalist Kevin Mahogany (1958-2017), who was one of Miwa’s fellow professors at Berklee, felt the same way about her, choosing Miwa to accompany him for both his classes and live shows.
“As a Berklee student, I was working as an accompanist in the voice department,” Miwa says, “and then as a staff accompanist after I graduated around the year 2000. When I heard that Kevin was coming to the school to teach, I requested to accompany him in all of his classes, because I’d always really liked his voice. There were a few other pianists who wanted to accompany him too, so there was an audition. Thankfully, he chose me, and I was so honored. I miss him.”
The latest of Miwa’s nine album releases is the critically acclaimed Songs of Joy (Ubuntu Music, 2021), featuring tracks she composed during the COVID-19 lockdown and garnering acclaim from peers as well as critics.
“I greatly appreciate and respect the clarity and strength in Yoko’s playing,” says 62-year-old fellow pianist Benny Green, a native New York City star in his own right. “It is very apparent — the honesty, care and depth of foundation she touches the piano with.”
A five-year recording hiatus ends later this year with two very disparate Miwa releases.
“One album will be with the trio,” she says. “The other will be me playing in a duo with a vocalist named Mikayla Shirley. She’s 24 years old, and in the master’s program at Berklee, and I just love her voice. We’ve been playing duets of jazz standards for a couple years now, and that album will be called ‘The Midnight Hours’ and will be released soon, with the trio album coming out sometime later over the summer. I don’t have a title for that one yet.”
Asked about her classical and jazz piano influences, Miwa has a laundry list that includes legends and contemporaries like the aforementioned Green.
“For classical music, my favorite has always been Chopin,” she says. “For jazz, my longtime hero is Bill Evans. He’s the reason I initially got into jazz. Oscar Peterson is the other reason. But I also love Keith Jarrett, McCoy Tyner, Thelonious Monk, Mulgrew Miller, Kenny Barron, Bill Charlap, Brad Mehldau, Larry Goldings, and Benny Green.”
Pop music also factors into Miwa’s open-minded output. Her recordings and concerts include occasional covers of the likes of the Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles.
“I’ll play some of my new material at the Arts Garage,” she says, “as well as selections from ‘Songs of Joy’ and some of the earlier albums. Plus some Beatles. People always like The Beatles.”
And lest any of the Fab Four’s fans think that Miwa was named for John Lennon’s widow, this Yoko sets the record straight.
“Most older traditional Japanese names are based on Chinese characters,” she says. “The ‘Yo’ portion of my name is for the ocean, with the ‘ko’ portion signifying child. So it’s ‘ocean child.’ I’ve heard that Yoko Ono’s first name is based on the same Chinese characters.”
If You Go
See the Yoko Miwa Trio at the Arts Garage, 94 N.E. 2nd Ave., Delray Beach.
When: 8 p.m. Feb. 21
Tickets: $65.50
Info: 561-450-6357, artsgarage.org