Recap and more pictures from the Okayama Jazz Festival Last year

Soul and Jazz singer Alicia Saldenha wrote a great recap of our experiences performing for the Okayama Jazz Festival last year. Check it out for her take on the festival and the great city Okayama for hosting such a fun festival:

http://alicia.kansaiblogger.com/2008/12/06/okayama-jazz-festival-with-rob-bennion-report-pics/

Performances in Japan

Larry Marshal, pictured above playing drums, is an incredible player. Listen to some of his past recordings (along with Phillip Strange on Piano) here.
Kazuki Iida was incredible on the keyboard. Hi intuition as a musician anticipated anything I wanted to do, and he created beautiful canvasses of chords over which the solos and melodies came very naturally. Check out his myspace page here, and his website here.
Toshiya Kasamatsu performed exceptionally on bass, laying down the groove with Larry.

It was great to perform with Alicia Saldenha. She's an up-and coming vocalist from Trinidad who's lived in Japan long enough to learn the language, and we talked a lot about her first album which is in the works. She has great talent and I wouldn't be surprised to see her name in big places somewhere down the road. Check out some of her youtube performances here.




This past week I headlined the Okayama Jazz festival in Japan, it was great. I love how appreciative Japanese audiences are of Jazz music . . . they listen intently to every song, and applaud after solos . . .

Here's an article with more pictures from the performance (Be forewarned it's in Japanese).