Personnel
Hitomi Oba – sax
Sam Gendel – sax
Justin Brown – drums
Jake Leckie – bass
Powerfully Inventive
LATimes
Oba is a thinker as well as a swinger: she likes versatility and spontaneity
Downbeat
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Hitomi Oba
Her musical interests lie in the exploration of crossing genres and musical practices. Projects include her small jazz ensembles of mixed instrumentations, sixteen-piece jazz orchestra, Jazz Nexus, electro-acoustic pop duo, Nova, and jazz opera, “STRANGE FELLOWE.” Her second jazz album, “Negai,” released under Japanese label M&I and distributor Pony Canyon, received a prestigious “Swing Journal 42nd Annual Jazz Disc Award.”
Oba is one of the co-founders of the new music collective, LA Signal Lab, premiering and recording stylistically diverse new music with a focus on integrating improvised and pre- composed music.
Oba currently teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles, Cal State Los Angeles and Pasadena City College, directing a Contemporary Jazz Ensemble, giving jazz saxophone lessons, and developing and teaching a multi-genre music theory course.