The Aaron Choulai Trio

bookings – uptownjazzcafe@email.com
Aaron Choulai is back! new trio featuring Tom Lee – double bass and Myka Wallace – drums
Aaron Choulai is an award winning and critically acclaimed pianist and composer whose work is recognised as innovating new directions in jazz, hip-hop and improvised music. From large scale multi media cross-cultural festival commissions. to Japanese hip-hop beat tapes, Choulai’s career spans over 20 years, crossing international borders and intersections between genre and culture.
Born in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, and having lived in Tokyo for 15 years, Aaron Choulai is an artist of diverse culture and musical expression. Choulai began his career in Melbourne as a pianist before signing with the American record label Sunnyside records and moving to New York in the early 2000’s. While working during this time as a bandleader and sideman in America and Europe, Choulai’s profile as a composer and arranger grew while participating in projects such as The Black Arm Band (arr: 2007) We Don’t Dance For No Reason (comp: 2008) and Kate Ceberano (md: 2004 -2007) back in Australia. In 2008 he undertook postgraduate studies at theTokyo University of the Arts and after graduating in 2013, continued living in Tokyo where he has become a prominent figure in music in Japan.
Aaron Choulai was awarded the Freedman Fellowship in Jazz (2014), the MEXT scholarship (2008) and was included in ‘The 100 most influential people in Melbourne’ by People Magazine (2005). He has collaborated with various artists including Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, Ben Monder, Jim Black, Daichi Yamamoto, Slack, Alan Browne, Paul Grabowsky, Joel Frahm, Yoshimoto Akihiro and more.
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