Collection: Shūkō Mizuno

Shūkō Mizuno was born in Tokushima in 1934, raised in Chiba, studied at Chiba University and then entered Tokyo University of the Arts in 1957 to study music theory, completing the specialist course in 1963. His composition teachers at Geidai included Yoshio Hasegawa and Michio Shibata; he studied ethnomusicology under Fumio Koizumi and jazz theory separately under Sadao Watanabe, who had developed his own deep engagement with both American jazz and Japanese musical identity. Mizuno then went to Mills College in Oakland to study electronic music while continuing to pursue jazz, an education that was unusually broad for a Japanese composer of his generation and that shaped everything he made afterwards. He joined the faculty at Chiba University as a professor of education, eventually becoming emeritus professor, and produced music across the dividing line between contemporary classical composition, electronic music, jazz and avant-garde big-band writing with no evident discomfort about what category any of it fell into. His collaboration with Toshiyuki Miyama and the New Herd produced “Jazz Orchestra ‘73” (TBM, 1973) and “Jazz Orchestra ‘75” (TBM, 1975), both of which placed in the top three of Swing Journal’s Jazz Disc Award. “The World of Shūkō Mizuno” (TBM, 1976), recorded live on the fourth night of the “5 Days in Jazz 1976” festival at Yamaha Hall in Ginza on May 26, 1976, features his Combo alongside the New Herd and became the record that made his name to the wider world. Kazumi Watanabe plays guitar throughout.