Hiroyuki Noritake (則竹裕之, ''Noritake Hiroyuki''; born August 27, 1964) is a Japanese

jazz fusion Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, ...

drummer and a

lecturer Lecturer is an List of academic ranks, academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. T ...

at the Showa Academia Musicae.

Career

Noritake started playing drums under the influence of his father, who was a jazz drummer, and joined jazz-fusion band

T-Square A T-square is a technical drawing instrument used by draftsmen primarily as a guide for drawing horizontal lines on a drafting table. The instrument is named after its resemblance to the letter T, with a long shaft called the "blade" and a sho ...

after being scouted in 1985 while attending

Kobe University , also known in the Kansai region as , is a leading Japanese national university located in the city of Kobe, in Hyōgo Prefecture, Hyōgo. It was established in 1949, but the academic origins of Kobe University trace back to the establishment of ...

. He has appeared in the

Playboy Jazz Festival The Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival is an event held in the Hollywood Bowl that celebrates jazz and features both established and up-and-coming jazz musicians. Founded in 1959 by Hugh Hefner as the Playboy Jazz Festival, it was held in Chicago but d ...

and has won the

Japan Gold Disc Award The is an award presented by the Recording Industry Association of Japan The is an industry trade group composed of Japanese corporations involved in the music industry. It was founded in 1942 as the Japan Phonogram Record Cultural Associa ...

for the Jazz category ten times. Noritake left T-Square with bassist Mitsuru Sutoh when the group disbanded temporarily in 2000. He has participated in live performances and recordings as a support member for the band as well as for former member

Masato Honda Masato Honda (本田雅人, born November 13, 1962), is a Japanese saxophone player, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. Born in Nakamura City, Kochi Prefecture (now Shimanto City), he graduated from Kunitachi College of Music. He is most well ...

's band and solo career. Noritake is active in other sessions such as Aonori with Tomohito Aoki, who became familiar with Honda's support. In addition, he learned how to compose during his time as a drummer for T-Square and provided tracks like "Yuh-Ja." In 2004, he formed Synchronized DNA, a twin drum unit with former

Casiopea , now known in its fourth iteration as Casiopea-P4, is a Japanese jazz fusion band formed in 1976 by guitarist Issei Noro, bassist Tetsuo Sakurai, drummer Tohru "Rika" Suzuki, and keyboardist Hidehiko Koike. In 1977, keyboardist Minoru Mukaiya ...

drummer

Akira Jimbo , is a Japanese jazz fusion drummer who combines electronic drum technology and acoustic drums. Aside from his solo work, he was the drummer for the Japanese jazz fusion band Casiopea and had participated in side projects with Keiko Matsui, Sham ...

. At the end of the same year, he participated in Casiopea's tour, in which Jimbo was now a supporting member, as Synchronized DNA. In 2005, he released the DVD "Double Drum Performance" and went on a live house tour to commemorate it. In July, he rejoined the Casiopea tour. The unit toured in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

and performed at the Montreal Drum Festival. In 2006, along with Honda on saxophone, Keiji Matsumoto on keyboard, and Mitsuru Sutoh on bass, they formed Masato Honda with Voice of Elements, a band in which all members were former T-Square members. In addition to leading the Japanese jazz fusion world as a regular member of the Sadao Watanabe Quintet, Kazumi Watanabe Jazz Return Project, and Dimension, he has been a supporting member of pop singer

Ayaka Hirahara is a Japanese pop singer. She was affiliated with the Dreamusic label until 2013 when she moved to Universal Music Japan. Biography Hirahara comes from a musical family; her father, Makoto Hirahara, is a saxophone player, her grandfather, Tsut ...

's backing band since 2010. Noritake, along with fellow T-Square drummer Satoshi Bandoh, are both featured on several tracks of the

Mario Kart 8 is a 2014 kart racing game developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii U. It features the '' Mario Kart'' series' game mechanics, in which players drive go-karts using ''Mario'' franchise characters in various race formats. Items placed ...

soundtrack.

References

1964 births Living people {{Japan-musician-stub