Makoto Ozone San Francisco Performance Summer 2014
Saturday, July 5, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. (Davies Symphony Hall)
Sunday, July 6, 2014 at 2:00 p.m. (Stern Grove)
Edwin Outwater, conductor
Makoto Ozone, piano
Mark Inouye, trumpet
Scott Pingel, bass
Jacob Nissly, percussion
Straddling both classical and jazz, Japanese pianist Makoto Ozone has performed with jazz greats such as Gary Burton, Chick Corea, and Branford Marsalis as well as works by Gershwin, Bernstein, Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich with the NDR Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de chambre de Paris, and NHK Symphony Orchestra, among others. Ozone moved to the United States from Japan in 1980 to study jazz composition and arranging at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 1983, he graduated at the top of his class, gave a solo recital at the Carnegie Hall, and became the first Japanese musician to sign an exclusive contract with CBS.
Recently he debuted with the NY Philharmonic Orchestra on their Asia tour in winter of 2014 and was subsequently brought to New York by conductor Alan Gilbert for his US orchestral debut playing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the NY Phil on April 22, 2014. The New York Times gave him a rave review.