Double Bass and Cello | 1933-2022

Isao Suzuki was born in Tokyo on January 2, 1933, heard Milt Hinton perform on a United States military base in 1953 and taught himself double bass on the same bases. He worked through the Tokyo jazz scene with Hidehiko Matsumoto, Sadao Watanabe and Shotaro Moriyasu, led his own ensemble from 1965 to 1969, and was recruited by Art Blakey to join the Jazz Messengers in New York in 1969. During his New York period he performed and recorded with Ron Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk. He returned to Japan in the early 1970s, working with Kenny Burrell and Mal Waldron alongside his own groups, and began recording for Three Blind Mice. “Blow Up” (TBM, 1973), his debut, won the Japan Jazz Prize. “Black Orpheus” (TBM-63, 1976), a trio session recorded at Aoi Studio with pianist Tsuyoshi Yamamoto and American drummer Donald Bailey on February 20, 1976, is the most collected and most reissued of his TBM recordings, described by the label’s reissue notes as a cornerstone of Japanese jazz for its modal and soul-jazz treatment of the Oscar Hammerstein II and Luiz Bonfá composition. He expanded into cello and piccolo bass through the mid-1970s, mentored younger musicians including Hidefumi Toki, and established a jazz club in Osaka in 1987. Suzuki received the Fumio Nanri Prize in 2008 or 2009 (sources vary) and died in Kawasaki, Kanagawa on March 8, 2022, aged 89, of pneumonia caused by COVID-19.