Oral History - all
Birth Date: May 5, 1930
Deceased Date: April 20, 2020
Hiroaki Oh-oka sat on a thin mat in front of a leg-less table in his traditional Japanese home where he outlined the history of the bamboo flutes his five- man company produced. The company, which his father started as a street vendor in Tokyo, holds a patent for the colorful plastic ends on the... more
Hiro Miyaji is the president of Miyaji Music, which opened in 1917 in Japan. He later expanded the wholesale business his grandfather started to include retailing. The company began providing wood instrument accessories such as violin bows. Miyaji Music had been distributing their products all... more
Yutaha Kurihara formed his own case company in Japan, which came into its own in the 1989s when he introduced a line of cases in a variety of colors. Since that time Yutaha has been very active in the Tokyo Manufacturing Association. He found his involvement and volunteer work with the... more
Takeshi Inomata is the noted jazz drummer who, among other things, helped design the first percussive instruments for Yamaha. His work with Yamaha took place during the early 1960s when the company began providing drum and percussive instruments and accessories. It was a contribution Takeshi was... more
Birth Date: September 1, 1932
Deceased Date: December 10, 2020
Toru Hora was classically trained on the piano and attended Juilliard. He joined the Buffet Crampon company in 1964 and both established and served as president of the Buffet Japan branch three years later. Much of his effort in Japan was to establish the brass instruments into the market and to... more
Motohichi Harada led the movement that brought the very first marching band to Japan, which took place in 1963. He has since worked for the NHK for over thirty years and formed the Japan Marching Band Directors Association in 1971 and the Japan Marching Band Association the following year. Both... more
Kenji Chiwaki followed in the footsteps of Toru Hora as the president of Buffet Crampon Japan. Hora-san opened the branch in Tokyo in 1967 and helped establish the brand within the Asian market. Kenji joined the company in 1986 and has focused on the three elements he learned from his predecessor... more
Quincy Jones! How can you write a few sentences to describe Quincy Jones? His long and amazing career in music has produced the soundtrack to many of our own life experiences and his drive to create and innovate has benefited music lovers around the world! It is such an honor to have captured some... more
Birth Date: May 10, 1924
Deceased Date: September 18, 2020
Sanjiro Kawamorita was drafted into the Japanese Army during World War II. He served under Shigeru Kawai who hired Kawamorita-San and other soldiers from his unit after the war. He remained with the piano manufacturer, based in Hamamatsu Japan until his retirement for a total of 53 years! Before... more
Ryoichi Sasaki was hired by Yamaha in 1967 working in the method book division. In 1978, he formed his own publishing company, Rittor Music, which focuses on producing music-themed magazines, including guitar and technology magazines. Ryoichi has also been very active in copyrights and the rights... more
Akio Hiyoshi was on the engineering team at Yamaha in 1959 that designed the Electone Organ, which brought the small piano manufacturer into the electronic musical instrument market, where they would become dominant for decades. The team also worked on the Clavinova, the CS 80 (Yamaha's last... more
Ken Oda was hired by Yamaha in 1967 to run their retail store in San Francisco, California. He continued to work for the company until his retirement at which point he joined Fender Musical Instruments. While at Yamaha he met and worked with Bill Schultz who later hired Ken to help grow the Asian... more
Hirokazu Kato took part in the innovative engineering team at Yamaha in Japan who utilized FM Synthesis to create an electronic musical instrument, first the TRX prototype and then the revolutionary DX7. Kato-san began his career with Yamaha in 1965 when he helped design the company's first... more
Birth Date: December 25, 1927
Deceased Date: October 27, 2018
Mitsuo Kasahara served as the first president of Yamaha Corporation of America after setting up the branch office in Southern California in 1961. Three years earlier he established the first Yamaha office in Mexico as well! These were the first branches in North America, which led to a period of... more
Kazuo Matsushita is the son of the founder of Audio-Technica, a creative and innovative company that has been an important part of the music industry since the early 1960s. When Kazuo began working full time for the company, he led the teams that focused on the designs and production of... more
Katie Yu first heard about Tom Lee Music Company in Hong Kong while her children were taking music lessons. In 1991, she began working in the administrative office for the store. She found the company to have a great deal of family pride as she worked alongside the two founders, Tom and Betty Lee... more
Kenny Lee began playing music in grade school and has been passionate about it ever since those early years. When he heard from a friend about a job at Tom Lee Music Company in Hong Kong, Kenny jumped at the chance. In the early part of his career, Kenny worked in nearly every part of the store... more
Frank Lee’s parents established Tom Lee Music Company in Hong Kong to bring quality musical instruments to their customers. As President of the company, Frank has focused on those original goals and has followed his parents lead to serve their customers. Having been brought up in the business,... more
Louis Ip was given a lead from a friend that Tom Lee Music in Hong Kong was hiring and he raced down to apply. He has since enjoyed one of the longest employments with the company, fifty years at the time of this interview in 2011. Over the years Louis has worked in several areas of the company... more
Birth Date: May 15, 1966
Deceased Date: September 10, 2021
Keith Chen joined the Tom Lee Music Company in Hong Kong as a guitar salesman. The large store had a small guitar department when Keith first joined the company and he took great pride in watching the department grow and develop. During that time he also served in several areas within the guitar... more