Plenty of performers have looked to bring jazz tradition and the European musical canon together over the years. It’s an understandable, and not always ill-advised, impulse. The merging of those very different endeavors sometimes can bring great results – pianist Jon Batiste’s recent Beethoven Blues is just one example. Other such are best left unnamed. But rarely does the merger seem to be undertaken as a singular practice.
Pianist Makoto Ozone might be uncommon in finding a way to bring the two disciplines together. Applying jazz tradition to Mozart and Beethoven, in his hands, isn’t a superimposition, it’s a methodology. He leads a jazz big band, No Name Horses, and performs frequently with symphonic orchestras. The differences, he says, are deep: from way you breathe while playing, the way you sit at the instrument, even the musculature involved. But he finds the bridge.
“Jazz bands are easy because they have the microphones in the piano”, he says. “Orchestras, you have to make the piano sound and resonate. There is a certain technique to do that. Over the years, I have built the muscles in my back so I can dig in harder”.
But perhaps the biggest difference, according to Ozone, is in the ways time is felt. Jazz is a soloist’s music; rhythm and tempo are spontaneous and fluid. But at the same time, it’s a communal endeavor. Coming from a career playing jazz, the freedom to feel time in tandem with an ensemble is something Ozone brings to the piano bench when taking on the classics. This autumn, a tour with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra will take him to Berlin, Budapest and Düsseldorf. Conducted by Myung-whun Chung, the programme draws from both worlds, setting Prokofiev alongside George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein.
“A typical classical soloist plays what they want to play and the conductor in the orchestra follows them, but that’s not how I want to play”, Ozone explains during an interview at Yamaha Artist Services in midtown Manhattan. The conductor asks “how do you want to do this?” he says, to which he responds, “let’s follow each other. Let’s make something up together”.
On the upcoming tour, Ozone will be met by an orchestra ready to take on both Gershwin and Prokofiev. Later concerts will feature Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky.
“Tokyo Philharmonic is one of my favorite orchestras”, he says. “They are not only adept in classical music, they can play pop and jazz. They can swing, they’re very versatile. For me to be selected for this very important tour is a great honor”.
Born in Kobe, Ozone started teaching himself on the family Hammond organ before he was five, exploring under his pianist father’s guidance. His devotion to jazz organ solidified when his father gave him a Jimmy Smith record, but at age 12 his uncle gave him front row tickets to see Oscar Peterson play. Peterson is one of jazz’s great accompanists. His recordings with Ella Fitzgerald are a textbook in subtlety and inventiveness, underscoring emotion while never getting in the way. But the young Makoto had little interest in the piano. Reluctantly, he consented to attend.
“I was not excited!” he recalls, laughing, but “this big guy came out, he starts playing and he’s swinging like crazy. I was in tears! I was so shocked! I went home and said, ‘Mom I want piano lessons, but I need a teacher who can teach me the technique.’”
That early enthusiasm stuck with him. 25 years later, in 1998, he released the album Dear Oscar on Verve Records, a label that released more than two dozen of Peterson’s own albums.
Getting an early professional start may have given Ozone the time to pursue a double career. He was appearing regularly on Osaka Mainichi Broadcasting by age six and in 1980 moved to Boston to study jazz composition and arranging at the Berklee College of Music. He graduated in 1983, gave a solo recital at Carnegie Hall, and soon became the first Japanese musician to sign an exclusive contract with CBS.
But the real boost in his jazz career came with a gig playing a reception that was attended by vibraphonist Gary Burton, an established bandleader by that point who had worked with Stan Getz and George Shearing among many others. That chance encounter led to a meeting and eventually a place in Burton’s band and on three albums. He has since worked with Chick Corea, Paquito D’Rivera, Herbie Hancock, Branford Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis and others.
“Gary Burton really taught me not how to play, but how to listen,” Ozone says. “I’m the kind of person who hates to be taught. I want to find out on my own. But everything he said to me made a lot of sense.”
Ozone found his second footing with a 2003 invitation to play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat major, K. 271 with the Sapporo Symphony, presenting a real challenge for the pianist, enough so that after accepting he considered canceling the engagement.
“I decided to do it, then the question was, ‘How do I do it?’” he says. “I had six months to prepare. I didn’t want to play other jazz arrangements because it sounded tacky when I tried to put jazz harmonies on it. I was so nervous”.
Ozone stresses his need to be able to hear the jazz and see his own direction in reframing such known and beloved compositions, such as Rachmoninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, which he has often performed.
“Rachmaninov, the harmonic structure, I can re-harmonize without being cheesy”, he says. “I have to be careful when I do it. I want to make sure it’s just as interesting harmonically”.
The Sapporo performance was well received, though, enough so that he was invited to play the concerto in Warsaw, another opportunity that he didn’t immediately jump on. “I said, ‘this is not going to happen. I’m not going to go to Warsaw and make a fool of myself.’”
He didn’t make a fool of himself, however, and was invited back to play Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto the following year.
More opportunities followed. In 2014, conductor Alan Gilbert invited him to join the New York Philharmonic on an Asian tour. He went on to appear with the NY Phil at Lincoln Center in 2014 and 2017. A 2018 album documented their performances of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety.
At first, Ozone “wasn’t a big fan of Rhapsody in Blue”, he says. “It sounded to me like somebody trying to make jazz sound like jazz… But I’ve always been a big fan of his Concerto in F.”
Gershwin’s orchestration of the Concerto is what sold Ozone on it, over Ferde Grofé’s original arrangement of the Rhapsody, but in playing he came to appreciate the thematic development and the classical approach to jazz language in Rhapsody in Blue. But even more, he hears it in Shostakovich, whose piano concertos he has also performed.
“Shostakovich, he loves jazz”, Ozone says. “And he writes something in the style of jazz that’s very close to the form to me.”
Ozone has worked under the batons of Marin Alsop, Charles Dutoit, Carlos Miguel Prieto, François-Xavier Roth, Lahav Shani and Thomas Zehetmair and such orchestras as NDR Radiophilharmonie, the San Francisco Symphony, the Sao Paulo Symphony, and Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, as well as orchestras back home including the NHK Symphony Orchestra and Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra.
During the 2024–25 season, Ozone gave the European premiere of his own piano concerto, Mogami, with Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, along with performances with the Oregon Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic and at the and Melbourne International Jazz Festival. He also has over 300 compositions to his name, from the No Name Horses book to a symphony and piano concerto.
He continues to maintains a balance between jazz and classical performance. In addition to the upcoming Tokyo Philharmonic tour, he recently visited Europe with his own trio, with bassist Shimpei Ogawa and drummer Kunito Kitai. Being a bandleader also affords him the opportunity to hand down some of the lessons he’s learned.
“I’m very proud to say I found these two youngsters”, he says. “I’m very proud of these musicians and pass on what I learned from the legends Gary, Chick, Herbie, all the musicians who taught me to play. Chick was the first one who turned me onto Mozart.”
And at 64, Ozone has a lot of composing, performing and exploring ahead of him.
“Oscar Peterson, the way he drives, the beauty, his notes are full of joy”, he says. “I’m trying to make people feel that joy from the notes I play.”
Makoto Ozone performs with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in Tokyo on 5th, 16th & 20th October and on tour from 28th October–11th November.
See all upcoming performances by Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.
This article was sponsored by Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.
