Toru Dodo

Jazz pianist Toru Dodo was born in Tokyo, Japan, on February 8, 1972, and started playing classical music at age four, listening to his share of Johann Sebastian Bach, Fryderyk Chopin, Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, Sergei Prokofiev, and Giacomo Puccini well into his teenage years. But he discovered jazz in his studies at the Meiji University in his hometown while also majoring in economics. Admitted influences on that end included Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and Joe Zawinul, as well as Steve Reich and Japanese fusion icons Ryuichi Sakamoto and Toru Takemitsu...