Updated: January 25, 2024
Born: August 31, 1980
Tomoko Omura is a composer and violinist. She was named #1 Rising Star Violinist by Downbeat Magazine’s Critics Poll in 2021. Her fifth album, “Branches Vol. 2” (Outside In Music, 2021) was named Bandcamp’s “Best Jazz of 2021”. She has played at internationally renowned venues including the Village Vanguard, The Jazz Gallery, Jazz Standard, Lincoln Center Appel Room, Smalls, Mezzrow, SF Jazz Miner Auditorium, National Sawdust, Newport Jazz Festival, Blue Note, among others. She has also performed and recorded with many of today’s leading artists including Paquito D’Rivera, Fabian Almazan, Linda Oh, Camila Meza, Aubrey Johnson, Vadim Neselovsky, David Broza, David Amram, and more.
Her music has been featured on major international publications including Strings magazine, GRAMMY.com, WBGO’s “Jazz United” & “The Pulse”, Bandcamp Daily, Jazz Sessions, Jazz Times, Downbeat, AllAboutJazz, and more. Her fourth album “Branches Vol. 1” (Outside In Music, 2020) was also chosen for Bandcamp’s Best Jazz August 2020, among other critical acclaim. Jazz Times also premiered the music video of “Revenge Of The Rabbit” from this album. Her 3rd release, “Post Bop Gypsies” (Inner Circle, 2017), is a contemporary jazz trio album in the classic Gypsy jazz instrumentation of violin, guitar and bass. “Roots”, her second album, and first for Inner Circle Music, is a compelling tribute to her native Japan, featuring original arrangements of ten classic Japanese folk and popular songs. Downbeat awarded “Roots” four and half stars, naming Omura “a leader with a fine future”. From 2015-2020, she was also named a “Rising Star” in Downbeat magazine's Critic's Poll.
In earlier years, she was a full time member of the world folk group, The Guy Mendilow Ensemble, as well as the contemporary Celtic ensemble, Runa, and toured around the US as a folk musician. She was also a member of the vintage jazz band Carte Blanche.
Born and raised in Shizuoka, Japan, Omura began playing the violin at a young age under her mother’s instruction, and later began self-studying jazz while attending Yokohama National University. In 2004, she relocated to the United States when she was awarded a scholarship to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. While at Berklee, she worked with such legendary musicians as George Garzone, Hal Crook, Ed Tomassi, Jamey Haddad, Matt Glaser and Rob Thomas. Also at Berklee, she was the first violinist to receive the school’s prestigious Roy Haynes Award.
Omura became a mother in 2020 and lives in Brooklyn, NY with her son, Allan, her husband, Glenn Zaleski and her cat, Leila. She is a NY faculty member of Jazz House Kids.
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All About Jazz Articles
Tomoko Omura: Branches Vol. 1
by Friedrich Kunzmann
Violinists come in many shapes, colors and sizes. In jazz, there are those who bridge the gap between classical music and a more improvised repertoire seamlessly, as seen with pioneers such as American avant-gardist Mark Feldman. There are others who go about their craft with a more rootsy approach to the improvised music tradition—as heard with virtuosos like Regina Carter. And then of course there's everything in between, from old guard veterans like Stephane Grappelli (also known as ...
read moreTomoko Omura: Branches Vol. 1
by Nicholas F. Mondello
With Branches Vol. 1, award-winning violinist Tomoro Omura dives deep into exploring textures and melodic invention drawn from Japanese folklore. This effort is a contemporized display which validates Omura's vast instrumental abilities and also channels Japanese folklore as a launch-point for her superior composition skills. The recording is seductive, deeply emotional and meditative, and, simultaneously, elegantly refined. The album offers six tracks, each a fascinating voyage. “Moonlight in Vermont" gets such a re-imagined, polyrhythmic treatment that one ...
read moreTomoko Omura: Branches Vol. 1
by Mike Jurkovic
If, as you start to yield willingly to the sumptuous, hypnotic Branches, Vol. 1, you should need to walk away and attend to other home/bunker business, try to keep at least one ear on the music. From any point in any room you might hear a gypsy laugh, a lover cry, a Celtic reel. A marvelous new touch on a centuries old instrument, bringing the ages together, gathering all the ley lines into one bustling hub. A rising ...
read moreAubrey Johnson: Unraveled
by C. Michael Bailey
What does it take to move music from the strictly aural to revealing the more tactile elements like texture and consistency? Vocal artist, composer and arranger Aubrey Johnson, with her scoring hat on, demonstrates that intelligent instrument choice and subtle arrangement of notes in time coupled with sensitive sound engineering can produce music with a palpable touch and feel. On her debut recording Unraveled, Johnson curates a delicate collection of original and originally-arranged standards with an authentic organic finish and ...
read moreAubrey Johnson: Unraveled
by Dan Bilawsky
Serving as a statement of elucidation, exploration and emotional reasoning, Unraveled lays bare a unique soul while presenting a clear-headed means of disentangling complex artistic threads. It's an album that's as sophisticated as it is accessible and as personal as it is universal in its line(s) of thought. In short, it's a debut destined to stand out from the pack. Over the past decade, give or take, vocalist Aubrey Johnson has carved out a unique niche with ...
read moreAnnie Chen: Secret Treetop
by Angelo Leonardi
Nel suo secondo album la cantante cinese Annie Chen compie un bel passo avanti, imboccando un percorso più complesso ed eclettico, anche se meno accattivante rispetto all'esordio di Pisces The Dreamer. Se in quel disco del 2014 esprimeva la sua adesione ai classici modelli del canto jazz qui Annie sperimenta una sintesi tra jazz moderno e modelli vocali e strumentali di provenienza orientale. Scelte condivise da un organico culturalmente eterogeneo, comprendente il chitarrista polacco Rafal Sarnecki, il violinista giapponese Tomoko ...
read moreAnnie Chen Octet: Secret Treetop
by Jack Bowers
Over the years, jazz has widened its horizons to encompass a broad range of music that many of those who practiced and/or appreciated the more traditional forms might not recognize, let alone endorse. Among the more recent genres is “world music," which embodies various rhythmic and harmonic elements of jazz without assimilating its core values. On her second album, Secret Treetop, composer/vocalist Annie Chen's octet performs world music and does it well--but it is only narrowly akin to jazz in ...
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Tomoko Omura's Debut Album "Visions"
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All About Jazz
“Welcome to an incredible album by the extraordinary young jazz violinist and composer Tomoko Omura. “Visions" is a tribute to seven of the finest jazz violinists of all time. And in it, Tomoko does more than just honor these gentlemen... She really gets to the emotional core of what makes each of them tick as players. Her compositions are lovely, well-conceived tunes that are played blazingly by her crackerjack band, and especially by Tomoko herself. Her Playing here is uniformly ...
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A leader with a fine future.
-Downbeat Magazine by Joe Tangari
"With a clear and sturdy violin attack, and an inventive voice as an improviser”
“A rising talent worth watching” - New York Times, July 2017
everything ceaselessly flows, oft breezy, swingin', be-boppy while wafting through the hip museum
- FAME review by Mark S. Tucker
no matter how complex and expansive things may get, she retains those qualities that made the songs memorable in the first place. It’s a hell of an accomplishment. It’s also a seriously exciting album
One of the best things to come out all year. It was my Pick of the Week when it first hit the shelves back in January… and it remains one of the best things on that shelf as the year comes to a close.
-Bird is the Worm
Her swooping lines and emotive outpourings are contemporary without losing the sense of tradition inherent in both Japanese folk and Western jazz - in other words she can swing!
- Bebopspokenhere
Omura masterfully injects her bold and contemporary blend of jazz into these Japanese standards to create a new and refreshing sound she can proudly call her own.
-Nextbop by Sebastien Helary
"Roots" is a tremendous accomplishment, and undoubtedly one of the most important and creative jazz albums produced by a violinist in recent history.
- Chtistian Howes
"Roots" reaches back for its source material but is most certainly contemporary music at its best.
- Step Tempest
At once, Tomoko Omura's "Roots" is stirring and melodiously captivating
Primary Instrument
Violin
Location
New York City
Willing to teach
Beginner to advanced
Credentials/Background
All levels are accepted. All lessons, workshops inquiry, please e-mail to: [email protected]
Rob Mullins
piano
PJ Parker
vocals
Dave Holland
bass
John Beasley
piano
Frank Macchia
composer / conductor
Sony Holland
vocals
Kelly Rossum
trumpet
Bill Cunliffe
piano
Jean-Luc Ponty
violin
Mark Egan
bass
Allison Adams Tucker
vocals
Project Grand Slam
band / ensemble / orchestra
Dave Lisik
trumpet
Juliet Kelly
vocals
Christian Howes
violin
Regina Carter
violinArtists who share similar musical characteristics to Tomoko Omura.
Zbigniew Seifert
violin
Wayne Shorter
saxophone
Regina Carter
violin
John Coltrane
saxophone
Miles Davis
trumpet
Mark Feldman
violin
Allan Holdsworth
guitar, electric
Charlie Parker
saxophone, alto
Jean-Luc Ponty
violin
