Yokohama Calling presents high-quality artists in unique cross-cultural events.
As a producer, we are driven to create events that are unique and exciting for the audience and the artists involved. We bring together musicians from Japan, the United Kingdom and beyond, for one-off performances that will surprise and remain in the memory.
We are most active in jazz, contemporary and traditional music genres. Our concerts and workshops are designed to have broad appeal and to promote cross-cultural collaboration in performance and learning. We seek opportunities to present other aspects of culture and the arts alongside our concerts so that they become events or mini festivals.
Yokohama Calling is a not-for-profit organisation
Our mission is to promote cross-cultural understanding through the universal power of music and arts. We bring people together and create opportunities to experience harmony and beauty, and to realise a common identity within humanity.
Our community, therefore, is widespread and includes people of all ages – adults, professionals, students and children with an interest in workshops or the performance of music, the arts & culture.
We believe that a supportive and inclusive environment of creativity, understanding and joy encourages people, especially children, to thrive. Our audience plays a very important part in this inclusive community.
View our gallery post from a recent workshop at World Heart Beat Music Academy in London.
As a Community Interest Company, our revenue and any profit raised by our activities goes back into creating more events, workshops and opportunities, allowing us to continue to do the work we do. We also rely on grants and loans from funding bodies as well as donations from individuals.
Why Yokohama Calling?
Yokohama Calling gets its name from the spirit of 1920’s Yokohama which heard the ‘call of the west’ through jazz music arriving via Japan’s largest port. But it wasn’t just the music that got the Japanese so excited almost 100 years ago, it was the fashion, dances, literature and culture that came with the visitors, and travelling musicians who would also perform and teach in the local cafes to a very curious and appreciative Japanese audience.
So, Japan’s love affair with jazz began and remains to this day, stronger, more diverse and vibrant than ever.
It is that openness, enthusiasm and generosity in collaboration – the spirit, that we wish to replicate and promote today. We want the world to hear Yokohama Calling.
