Kanal, Hideto
Kanal, Hideto
Kanal, Hideto, avant-garde Japanese jazz bassist; b. Tokyo, Japan, 1931. Along with guitarist Takayanagi Masayuki, he was a leader of the 1960s avant-garde in Japan. Like so many of his generation, his professional career began in American servicemen’s clubs, but after meeting Duke Ellington he began a more formal study of music. Kanai and Masayuki founded the Jazz Academy (later New Century Music Workshop) in I960, performing experimental jam sessions in coffee shops that incorporated their interest in contemporary classical music and the jazz of Sun Ra, Charles Mingus, and Omette Coleman. He led the King’s Roar orch. in the 1960s and 1970s, touring the U.S.S.R. and South America with jazz arrangements of Japanese children’s songs. In the late 1990s he led the Yokohama Jazz Orch.
Discography
Ginparis Session: June 26, 1963 (1986); Concierto de Aranjuez.
—E. Taylor Atkins