OH Taxonomy
Nobunari Yanagisawa is the president of the company his father established just before World War II. The company began as a repair shop, which focused on the saxophone. The factory was used for military projects during the war but closed after the war. His father had a difficult time finding raw...
Kazuhiko Shima is the director of the Hamamatsu Musical Instrument Museum, which opened to the public in 1995. He was hired the year before to help assemble the instruments and create the displays. He is proud of the programs they have developed over the years to engage visitors of all ages. The...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Phil Passin began working for Carl Fischer in 1947 in the shipping department, where he took a deep interest in the industry. After serving in the US Army during the Korean War, Phil returned to Carl Fischer where he began working his way up in the company. When the company sold its interest in...
Lee Rocker formed a punk rock style group that just happened to play rockabilly. The Stray Cats had a host of hit records, first in England and beginning in the early 1980s in the United States. Uniting their sound and the three members was their friendship since they were in grade school and...
Andy Fraser took part in the second wave of the British Invasion in the late 1960s as a member of Free. He joined the group as a teenager and in fact was instrumental in the writing of their big hit, “All Right Now,” which has since become a rock anthem. Andy was involved with several other bands...