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
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.