Sakurai

Tetsuo Sakurai (born November 13, 1957 in Tokyo) is a Japanese musician. He started playing bass when he was 13 years old. He was a member of the jazz fusion band Casiopea in 1976-1989 and Jimsaku with Akira Jimbo in 1990-1998. He has released a total of 37 albums as members of Casiopea and Jimsaku as well as solo. He also made 3 instructional videos. Now, he is composing and playing his own music as a solo artist with domestic and foreign musicians.

Japanese fusion bassist Tetsuo Sakurai, carved a niche in the industry as a fleet fingered player that could hit the groove with authority, his slap technique was as good as it gets. He has dozens of recordings to his credit as a member of the long time fusion band Casiopea, Jimsaku, and more recently as a solo artist. The music on this cd will remind of a heavier version of Casiopea, with more progressive tendancies, that remind of the band Fragile also some looping and dubs are added for a fresh contemporary sound. Lot's of heavy bass accentuations are present throughout, and the music relies on an aggresive approach. Sakurai proves to be a versatile bassist on every song, he is not one to stay in the funk realm, as he shows he has a melodic edge to him as well.

In 2001, Japanese bassist Tetsuo Sakurai released an awesome hard-hitting fusion album called Gentle Hearts. This great album featured the very special talents of Greg Howe on guitar and Dennis Chambers on drums. Hear modern jazz from the Far East!