Miho Hazama

Beyond Orbits is the new album from composer and conductor Miho Hazama – a vibrant new album celebrating the 10 year anniversary of her ensemble M-Unit. Beyond Orbits is testament to Miho’s boundless creativity and artistic vision and to the remarkable growth of her career in Japan, Europe and the US in recent years. Beyond Orbits is an album born out of the challenges of the past few years.

One of the most promising and talented composer/arrangers of her generation, Grammy-nominated Miho Hazama releases her inspired new album, Imaginary Visions - her first album to feature the Danish Radio Big Band of which she is chief conductor.

Despite her young age, the classically trained, Tokyo-born Miho Hazama is an accomplished conductor/composer who has so much to give to the contemporary jazz universe. Dancer in Nowhere is her third release with the m_unit, her highly qualified 13-piece signature ensemble.

Imaginary Visions is the visionary new album from Grammy-nominated conductor and composer Miho Hazama, featuring The Danish Radio Big Band – one of the leading jazz ensembles in Europe. For Miho, this album represents a new era as part of a growing and blossoming international career.

Hailed by veteran jazz journalist Dan Ouellette as “a vital young artist who is delivering a singular style of music steeped in a variety of idioms,” composer and bandleader Miho Hazama leads her boundlessly creative 13-piece m_unit in its third triumphant offering, Dancing in Nowhere. “Her music is complex, teeming with unexpected twists and jolting turns as well as pockets of frenzy that lead into wonder,” remarked Ouellette, assessing a growing body of work that includes the 2013 m_unit debut Journey to Journey and the 2015 follow-up Time River.

The best week of the young composer/arranger Miho Hazama’s life was a hectic one. In 2011, she was invited as one of eight arrangers from around the world to take part in the famed Metropole Orkest’s residency program, led by the legendary Vince Mendoza. There were master classes and rehearsals all week for arrangements the residents would write, in four days, to be performed by the Big Band conducted by Mendoza and featuring vocalist Roberta Gambarini.

Hailed by veteran jazz journalist Dan Ouellette as “a vital young artist who is delivering a singular style of music steeped in a variety of idioms,” composer and bandleader Miho Hazama leads her boundlessly creative 13-piece m_unit in its third triumphant offering, Dancing in Nowhere. “Her music is complex, teeming with unexpected twists and jolting turns as well as pockets of frenzy that lead into wonder,” remarked Ouellette, assessing a growing body of work that includes the 2013 m_unit debut Journey to Journey and the 2015 follow-up Time River.

“This album marks a new phase,” says Marius Neset. “It was the last thing I did in Copenhagen, which has been my life for the past seventeen years.” In late 2019 the saxophonist and composer moved from the Danish capital to return to his native Norway. In “Tributes”, recorded shortly before he left, he marks this point of transition with music that has astonishing freshness – and unmistakably vivid feelings of joy and fulfilment.

Assembled with 19 stellar musicians and fueled by inspiration from eclectic extremes, Big Heart Machine is a musical engine designed to start the listener s heart pounding and blood pumping. Composer, saxophonist and bandleader Brian Krock summons the bracing power of heavy metal, the dizzying precision of progressive rock and the heady abstractions of contemporary classical music, conjuring an exhilaratingly original take on the power and complexity of the modern big band. Their eponymous debut album, Big Heart Machine, was produced by multiple-Grammy-nominated composer Darcy James Argue and conducted by rising-star Miho Hazama.