Ryo Sasaki

Ryo Sasaki is a trumpet and flugelhorn player born in 1976 in Tokyo, Japan, who took up the trumpet at fifteen. He studied as a performance major at Berklee College of Music from 1996 to 1999, where his teachers included Tiger Okoshi and Darren Barrett, then played and taught in Tokyo before settling in New York in 2006. He has performed at venues including Smalls, the Blue Note, Minton's Playhouse, and the Apollo Theater, and for several years served as music director for the Greenwich Village restaurant One if by Land, Two if by Sea. His playing draws on the post-bop tradition and the standards repertoire. He hosts the afternoon jam session at Smalls Jazz Club alongside bassist Bill Crow.