Shunzoh Ohno - 1976 - Bubbles

Shunzoh Ohno

1976

Bubbles

01. Bubbles 11:03

02. Don't Get Down 9:57

03. Bullfight 11:17

04. Song For My Kid 9:05

05. Bubbles 6:15

Shunzo Ohno - Trumpet

Reggie Lucas - Guitar

Sam Johnson - Keyboards

Ronald Brockett Jr - Piano

Roy Haynes - Drums

Neil Clarke - Percussion

Recorded at Vanguard Studio, NYC, July 13&15, 1975

Born in Gifu Prefecture, Ohno found his musical calling at 13, beginning with his training on the trombone. By 19, he was Japan’s top jazz trumpeter.

Spanning five decades, Ohno’s fascinating career is a story of boundless talent and dogged determination, marked by seemingly insurmountable setbacks.

He had a chance meeting with bandleader Art Blakey, who invited him on a tour with the Messengers in Japan. At Blakey’s suggestion, he moved to New York City in 1974 to pursue his dream.

“When I told my mother and father in high school I was going to become a jazz musician, they said, ‘Oh God, a jazz musician! All they’re about is drinking, women and drugs. Forget it!’ ” recalls Ohno, who lives with his family in Westchester County, a suburb of New York City, in a recent interview with Kyodo News during his tour of Japan. “But I told my father, ‘I’m not that type of musician. I want to be a great, pure artist.’ ”

After getting his break with Blakey, Ohno turned his energies to Afro-Cuban jazz and recorded on the Grammy-Award winning album “Machito and His Salsa Big Band” in 1983. With master arranger and composure Gil Evans, who became a lifetime mentor, he played on the 1988 Grammy Award-winning recording “Live at Sweet Basil.”

He reached even loftier heights on a return to Japan with Super Sounds, a group that included jazz legends Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Larry Coryell.

But Ohno came hurtling back to Earth when he suffered serious injuries in a car accident in 1988.

His lips and teeth permanently damaged, Ohno says he immediately rejected the opinion of his doctors that he might never play again. But it meant a long road to recovery as well as finding a new way to play his instrument.

The second punch came in 1996. Ohno was diagnosed with aggressive fourth stage throat cancer. It was all but a death sentence. His doctors said that if he survived, playing the trumpet was again out of the question.

He underwent radical surgeries and radiation treatments for the next five years — a process in which 125 muscle structures, including tendons and nerves, had to be removed from his face, neck and shoulders. With no lip support, the battle to play began anew.

Ohno says because of the formidable circumstances he has faced he has gained a fresh perspective on how to reach the pinnacle other musicians might take for granted.

He is the first jazz musician to win the International Songwriting Competition’s grand prize for his composition of “Musashi,” inspired by 17th century samurai swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. He is also the only Japanese native to have won.

Ohno, who is also helping to raise donations for people affected by the Nepal earthquake, has done several benefit concerts under the banner “Hope and Courage for Japan.”

He arranged a performance to raise donations with other jazz musicians at a local school auditorium in Chappaqua, New York, on May 1, 2011. Since then, he has visited shelters, temporary housing, junior high schools and high schools in northeastern Japan twice a year to encourage communities through his music.