JUNKO YAGAMI: Pop Meets Jazz on Route 66

Junko Yagami brings Pop Meets Jazz on Route 66 to Birdland Theater for a one-night program built as a live experiment rather than a tribute or nostalgia set. Four musicians will reshape Yagami’s Japanese songs alongside familiar American standards connected to Route 66, using newly arranged material with no predetermined destination. Ross Pederson, the engagement’s bandmaster and drummer, leads the group; the evening treats the route as a meeting point for blues, jazz, folk, soul, Japanese pop, and the possibilities that emerge when those traditions are played together.

Yagami comes from Nagoya and has spent five decades as a vocalist and songwriter whose work joined American grooves to Japanese pop as early as the late 1970s. Her song “Bay City” has found listeners internationally, while her career has included a move to Los Angeles, a long pause from performing, and a self-produced, self-managed return to Japan following volunteer work in Tohoku after the 2011 earthquake. In 2022, she became the first Japanese artist inducted into the Women Songwriters Hall of Fame in the United States. Pederson is a founding member of Snarky Puppy who has collaborated with Fred Hersch, Patricia Barber, Donny McCaslin, and Patti Austin; his 2023 debut Identity drew praise from Modern Drummer, DownBeat, and JazzTimes.