Hiroshima

There are numerous active live music venues in Hiroshima. As anywhere and according to taste and interest, some with a slick music venue feel, others quite bohemian and eclectic… Many of the venues are clustered within the Nagarekawa / Yagenbori entertainment district. Nearly all are understandably focused on the Japanese audience. However, it’s also dotted with some pop-up venues. One interesting place to catch like sounds is Jimo café, which is a tight bohemian style cafe/bar in Noborimachi, not really genre-specific, rather more of a Japanese “Indie” orientated place that also hosts jazz-tinged acts. If it’s real Jazz you’re after then head to Lush Life (the venue name pays homage to composer and Duke Ellington collaborator, Billy Strayhorn and the title of a jazz standard about whiling away one’s lifetime with “jazz and cocktails” at “come-what-may places” and in the company of girls with “sad and sullen gray faces/with distingué traces). Lush Life the venue is very low key. Dominated by a grand piano and the bar and eight or ten sets of tables and chairs, it seats about twenty or so people. The resident sax player is the owner, the venerable Suetoshi Shimizu, who is credited as one of the top jazz…