The Temple University Jazz Band | "Live From Japan, Volume 1"

The Temple University Jazz Band, Directed by Grammy Winner Terell Stafford, Commemorates its First-Ever Tour of Japan on a Stunning New Live Album

Live From Japan – Due out February 6, 2026 via BCM+D Records – Features a Diverse Repertoire of Ellington Favorites, Jazz Classics and New Compositions Captured in Concert

The Temple University Jazz Band has traversed the country and the world under the leadership of Grammy-winning trumpeter Terell Stafford, performing at prestigious venues like Dizzy’s Club at Lincoln Center in New York City, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and traveling internationally to Germany and the Netherlands. Over Spring Break in March of 2025 the gifted ensemble notched even more miles with its first-ever trip to Japan.

The culmination of that five-day tour was a rapturously received two-set concert at the renowned nightclub Akasaka B-flat in Tokyo. That celebratory performance is captured in all its globetrotting glory on Live From Japan, the latest release by the TUJB on BCM+D Records.

Set for release on February 6, 2026, Live From Japan showcases a high-energy, vigorously swinging performance by the big band, its chemistry forged in the classroom but strengthened by the bonds that only a grueling foreign tour can build. That was exactly why Stafford, director of jazz studies and chair of instrumental studies at Temple’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, worked so tirelessly to make the trip a reality.

It wasn’t easy – especially given the fact that his original plans were derailed by the COVID pandemic in 2020. Stafford, an acclaimed trumpeter and bandleader in his own right as well as a longtime member of the Grammy Award-winning Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, is no stranger to the Land of the Rising Sun, having visited and performed there many times over the course of his 30-year career. Journeying halfway around the world with a small band of one’s contemporaries or a well-established big band, however, is a very different prospect from shepherding an ensemble of 21 young men and women, many of them leaving the country for the first time in their lives.

“We had a great time,” Stafford enthused. “It was an unbelievable experience for me, having been to Japan so many times, to see the students react to everything with fresh eyes. To see how beat down they were because of jetlag, but knowing they’d have to work through it and be professional. It taught them a lot of life lessons, and I was inspired by them.”

All of those emotions and experiences can be heard in the spirited set of music that makes up Live From Japan. “It all came out in the final concert,” Stafford said. The album kicks off in vigorous fashion with “Squatty Roo,” written for the Duke Ellington Orchestra by sax legend Johnny Hodges and arranged by bassist and bandleader John Clayton, a constant in the TUJB book.

The setlist includes three other Ellington classics, in David Berger’s transcriptions: “Jack the Bear,” featuring an eloquent turn by bassist Graham Kozak; “I Didn’t Know About You,” with a delicate vocal by Jacquee Paul; and a showstopping rendition of “Black and Tan Fantasy.” Don Menza’s “I Just Found Out About Love” is a lively workout for the whole band, with Paul’s punchy delivery of the celebratory lyric, while Bob Mintzer’s stunning arrangement of Herbie Hancock’s “Eye of the Hurricane” is borrowed from the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra’s book, a vital resource for the Temple program.

The album’s centerpiece is the breathtaking “Fantasia,” written specifically for the band by Tokyo native and Temple alum Yoichi Uzeki. An intricate chamber piece blurring the lines between classical and jazz influences, “Fantasia” was composed after extensive discussions between Uzeki and Stafford about the particular strengths of this iteration of the TUJB.

In addition to the musicians and the material, the other essential component of any live album is the audience, and the TUJB was met by as enthusiastic and adoring a crowd as it could have hoped for, adding immeasurably to this album’s vitality. The tour was so successful, in fact, that a second visit is already planned for March 2026 with legendary trumpeter Randy Brecker as guest soloist, with a second volume of Live From Japan scheduled to follow.

“Japanese audiences don’t take anything for granted because they don’t get to hear the music as much,” Stafford explained. “It was great for the students to feel all that love.”

That, for students just beginning to explore a life in music, is what a tour like this is all about. Experience it for yourself on Live From Japan.