Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/138854
Yoko Noge is right at home on stage at the Green Mill. YOKO NOGE Journeying from Osaka blues to Chicago jazz and landing somewhere in between. Yoko Noge's journey to becoming an integral player in Chicago's blues and jazz scene has been a long one. A native of Osaka, Japan, she formed her own blues band there before coming to Chicago in 1984. "One year passed, and I wasn't satisfied," she recounts. "I wanted to see more." Her Japanese husband at the time landed a gig as bluesman Willie Kent's guitarist, and Noge became a guest singer in Kent's band, which played local clubs like Mary's Lounge on the west side, where Noge honed her signature bluesy vocal delivery. Noge stuck it out in the US and became a student of sax player Clark Dean and virtuoso boogie pianist Erwin Helfer. Dean, who had changed Helfer's own conceptions of jazz as an "elite music," led Noge to jazz. "I found out that the blues is the spirit and the basis of their jazz music. My eyes opened up." Noge formed the Jazz Me Blues band and went on to play within this crossover territory for 15 years as residents at the much-loved HotHouse until its 2007 closure. These days find Noge bopping from various venues like Andy's, Katerina's, and the Green Mill. Noge's musical journey, oddly enough, has led her back to Japan—where she tours annually—into Japanese folk, which she fuses with blues, jazz, and Japanese instrumentation like taiko drums in something she calls Japanesque. Yoko Noge's Japanesque has played the jazz and blues fests and toured Europe, where it was warmly received. "People are very open-minded, they love it. Especially when we played in Poland, we couldn't stop playing for two hours, they kept asking for encores. We finally said enough." In recent years Noge has dedicated herself to cultural efforts as chair of the Osaka Committee of Chicago Sister Cities International. She spent months organizing "Kizuna," a photo exhibit of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami effects at the Thompson Center and Block 37 gallery. Part two of the show, about effects of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, is exhibiting in Chicago through 2013. Says the musician-activist, "I didn't want the American people to forget." yokonoge.com 118 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 116-121_MA_FEAT_Jazz_SUMMER13.indd 118 6/18/13 12:37 PM