Emi Makabe is a composer, vocalist and shamisen player whose music weaves jazz improvisation with Japanese folk song, classical counterpoint and rhythms from Brazil, Mali and Haiti. Born and raised in Japan, she moved to New York in 2008, earned a jazz performance degree at City College of New York and a master's from the Aaron Copland School of Music, and studied traditional shamisen with Sumie Akiyama and Tamami Imafuji. Her debut album, Anniversary, came out on Greenleaf Music in 2020, with original songs sung in English, Japanese and wordless vocalese alongside bassist Thomas Morgan, pianist Vitor Gonçalves and drummer Kenny Wollesen. The same quartet returned on Echo, released by Sunnyside Records in 2025. She also performs in a duo with Morgan, her husband, which played the Copenhagen Jazz Festival in 2018.
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