Miho Hazama: The Conductor Who Leads with Love

Today, we’re putting The Tonearm's needle on composer and chief conductor of the Danish Radio Big Band, Miho Hazama.

Miho grew up inside the Yamaha music education system in her native Japan. She moved to New York to study jazz composition at the Manhattan School of Music under Jim McNeely and has spent her career as one of the most distinctive voices in large-ensemble writing. Her work includes her own chamber jazz group m_unit, conducting posts with the Metropole Orkest and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, and a BBC Proms debut last year.

This week, she released Frames, her fourth album on Edition Records with the Danish Radio Big Band. The album draws on the musical language of the conductors who led that band across its decades of existence, including McNeely, who passed away last year. It's a project with significant weight behind it.

(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Miho Hazama's album Frames)

—

Dig Deeper

• Artist and Album:

• Visit Miho Hazama at mihohazama.com and follow her on Instagram, Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/mihohazamamusic/), and YouTube
• Purchase Miho Hazama's Frames from Edition Records, Bandcamp, or Qobuz, and listen on your streaming platform of choice
• Listen to m_unit: Beyond Orbits, Hazama's most recent album with her New York ensemble, on Bandcamp

• Danish Radio Big Band and Its History:

• Danish Radio Big Band — Wikipedia overview of the band's history and chief conductors
• Danish Radio Big Band performance archive on YouTube
• Ib Glindemann — founding bandleader and inspiration for Frames composition "The Pioneer's Quest"
• Palle Mikkelborg — Danish trumpeter and composer; former Danish Radio Big Band leader; Hazama cites him as a compositional influence on Frames
• Thad Jones — American trumpeter and composer who led the Danish Radio Big Band in the late 1970s

• Jim McNeely:

• Jim McNeely official website — composer, pianist, and Hazama's mentor at the Manhattan School of Music
• Jim McNeely — Wikipedia
• Pianist-Composer Jim McNeely: 1949–2025 — DownBeat obituary
• Vanguard Jazz Orchestra — the ensemble McNeely served as composer-in-residence, performing weekly at the Village Vanguard

• Educational Institutions:

• Manhattan School of Music — where Hazama earned her master's degree in jazz composition
• Kunitachi College of Music — where Hazama studied classical composition in Tokyo
• Yamaha Music Foundation — the educational organization whose nationwide network of schools supported Hazama's early musical development across Japan

• Composers Who Shaped Hazama's Voice:

• Maria Schneider — one of the jazz composers Hazama discovered in college that redirected her toward jazz
• Metropole Orkest — the Netherlands-based pop and jazz orchestra for which Hazama serves as permanent guest conductor

• Musical References and Concepts:

• George Russell — the American jazz composer and theorist Hazama imagines as a collaborator for the Frames composition "The Pioneer's Quest"
• Third Stream — the mid-twentieth-century movement blending jazz and classical idioms, associated with Ib Glindemann's programming at the Danish Radio Big Band

—

- Dig into this episode's complete show notes at podcast.thetonearm.com

—

• Did you enjoy this episode? Please share it with a friend! You can also rate The Tonearm ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

• Subscribe! Be the first to check out each new episode of The Tonearm in your podcast app of choice.

• Looking for more? Visit podcast.thetonearm.com for bonus content, web-only interviews + features, and the Talk Of The Tonearm email newsletter. You can also follow us on Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

• Be sure to bookmark our online magazine, The Tonearm! → thetonearm.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.