“Takumi’s Trick with Asian Friends” is specially formed for “Baku International Jazz Festival” of this time, consists of four Japanese young musicians, Takumi Nakayama as a leader, a saxophone player who attracts great expectations and attention with highly gifted performance ability in the current jazz scene of Japan, and the young and energetic musicians who expand aggressive performance activities; Yusei Takahashi (pf), Takumi Katsuya (eb) and Akira Yamada (drs), moreover,  two young gifted musicians with flexible musicality from Southeast Asia, Geraldo Bhaskara Putra Sibbald(ts/Indonesia) and Jacques Rivas Dufourt (perc/Phillippines). 

Please expect their “Asian Jazz” of the current progressive form in a full of youthful sensibility and enthusiastic energy.

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Takumi Nakayama (Alto Saxophone / Japan)

Born in Shizuoka in 1992, Takumi Nakayama started out on the piano at age of 5, and learned of the saxophone and jazz when he was 12. He graduated from Kunitachi College of Music at the top of his class. He has studied the saxophone under Yoshiyuki Nakayama, Atsushi Ikeda, and others. To date, he has performed with Toshiko Akiyoshi (pf), and Yosuke Yamashita (pf), among other musicians. As the lead alto saxophone in the High Society Orchestra at Waseda University, he received the top prize in the Yamano Big Band Jazz Contest for two consecutive years and received the top soloist prize. He is now an active performer mainly in his own quartet, as well as a composer/arranger, and is constantly on a quest for music that can strike a deep chord in the hearts of people.