Haruki Murakami ran a jazz bar in Tokyo called Peter Cat until 1981. This November the Barbican rebuilds it on stage for a single night, and both sittings sold out before the programme was a month old. That is the show people noticed. Six more Japanese nights are scattered through the rest of the EFG London Jazz Festival, which runs from 13 to 22 November 2026.
They sit across six venues in a programme of more than three hundred shows, and the festival lists every one of them separately. This guide puts them in one place, says which ones you can still get into, and ranks them.
What This Japanese Jazz Guide Covers
Two performances gone before the programme was a month old
Start with the bad news, because it changes how you plan the rest.
Haruki Murakami’s Jazz at Peter Cat: A Japanese Jazz Night is sold out at both sittings. Barbican Hall, Saturday 21 November, 5pm and 8.30pm, and neither has tickets. Returns are the only way in, and they surface on the Barbican’s own event page rather than anywhere else.
It is the show everybody wanted. Murakami ran a jazz bar called Peter Cat in Tokyo from 1974 to 1981, and the Barbican has rebuilt something of that room for one day, with spoken word, a stage design built for the show and newly commissioned visuals. Three bands from Japan play it: the Junko Onishi Trio, Sachi Hayasaka with her family trio TReS, and bassist Yoshio Suzuki’s quintet The Blend, with Kosuke Mine on tenor saxophone, Keisuke Nakamura on trumpet, Hakuei Kim on piano and Tamaya Honda on drums. Murakami is not appearing. He has given the show his blessing and stayed in Japan.
Our full write-up of that night, including the Barbican Murakami season it closes, is here: Haruki Murakami’s Jazz at Peter Cat at the Barbican.
Everything else in the Japanese programme is still available, and one of the best things in it is free.
Yasuaki Shimizu, Milton Court, Sunday 15 November
The only British date on Europe Tour 2026. Shimizu plays Paris on 3 November, Ghent on the 4th, Le Guess Who? in Utrecht on the 6th, Helsinki on the 8th and Stockholm on the 9th, then London on the 15th. Nothing else in the United Kingdom.
He debuted in 1978 and has released more than forty albums since. The programme here is built on two records from the early 1980s, Kakashi from 1982 under his own name and Utakata no Hibi from 1983 by his band Mariah, both reissued by the New York label Palto Flats and both responsible for the audience he has outside Japan today. His own tour announcement describes the set as an evolved and entirely reinterpreted version of that material, so this is a reworking rather than a recreation.
He plays it as a duo with his sister Mieko Shimizu, a singer, songwriter, composer and producer based in London, who has worked with Mick Karn, Nitin Sawhney and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Milton Court Concert Hall holds 608 people, 391 in the stalls and 217 in the circle, which makes this the smallest room any of the headline Japanese acts are playing.
Doors 7pm, stage 7.30pm. From £29 including fees, or £12 on a Young Barbican ticket for anyone aged 16 to 25. Full detail: Yasuaki Shimizu at Milton Court.
Riyoko Takagi Trio, Toulouse Lautrec, Thursday 19 and Friday 20 November
Four separate sittings across two nights in a Kennington jazz club, which makes this the easiest show on the list to fit around something else.
Riyoko Takagi was born in Tokyo in 1984, started piano at four, and came up playing Tokyo jazz clubs while she was a student at Keio University. She won the New Star category at the JAZZ JAPAN Awards in 2017 and placed fourth in the piano category of Lee Ritenour’s Six String Theory Competition. Her seventh album, Chasing the World, came out in July 2026, eleven of its twelve tracks her own compositions, written while she was travelling and studying through New York, Montreal, Boston, Shanghai and Beijing. One track is Chopin’s Waltz of the Puppies rearranged as jazz.
The travelling matters, because until recently she was almost entirely self taught. At forty she went to Berklee College of Music in Boston for a five week course, having spent her student years deliberately avoiding conservatoires.
This is her second run at Toulouse Lautrec in six months. Her first British performances were three nights at the same club in June 2026, part of a three week European trip that also took her to Paris and Milan, and she flew home to Tokyo at the end of that month. The club booked her back inside the year and gave her four sittings, which tells you more than any promotional line.
Klara Devlin opens. She is a London trumpeter and composer, a 2024 BBC Young Jazz Musician finalist and a Royal Academy of Music student, playing her own compositions rearranged for a cordless trio of trumpet, bass and drums.
The band is Riyoko Takagi on piano and Migdalia van der Hoven on drums. The double bass seat has not been announced yet.
Thursday 19 November at 7pm and 9.30pm, £27 including fees. Friday 20 November at 6pm and 9.30pm, £31 including fees. The 6pm Friday sitting is the one to take if you want a full evening afterwards.
Kyoto Jazz Massive close the festival at Islington Assembly Hall
Sunday 22 November, the last night, and the only chance to see Kyoto Jazz Massive with the full ten piece line-up.
Shuya Okino and his brother Yoshihiro were DJing in Kyoto before the self titled Kyoto Jazz Massive album arrived in 1994, and they marked thirty years since that debut with a compilation in December 2024. Gilles Peterson picked them up early. Spirit of the Sun came out in 2002 and the follow up took until December 2021, with Roy Ayers guesting on it. What is on stage in Islington is newer than either: the band now works with Echoes of a New Dawn Orchestra, a Parisian ensemble, with Vanessa Freeman on lead vocals.
Doors 7pm, stage 7.30pm. £33.54 including the booking fee. This one is 16 and over only, which rules out anyone planning to bring younger family. Full detail: Kyoto Jazz Massive at Islington Assembly Hall.
Shuya Okino plays a solo DJ set the night before, for £14
This is the one almost nobody will spot. The night before his own band closes the festival, Shuya Okino is at The Jazz Social on Ropemaker Street, on his own, from 9pm on Saturday 21 November, for £14 including fees.
He has been a DJ far longer than he has been a bandleader. He opened The Room in Shibuya in 1993 and still runs it, he has written three books on DJing and club jazz, and he revived the Kyoto Jazz name in 2015 as the Kyoto Jazz Sextet, whose albums Mission and Unity came out on Blue Note Japan.
Seeing him do this and then the full band the following evening is the best pair of nights in the Japanese programme, and the DJ set costs less than a third of either Barbican ticket.
Free at 1pm, the BBE Music Japanese jazz listening session
Barbican FreeStage on Level G, Saturday 21 November, 1pm, no ticket needed.
Tony Higgins and Mike Peden are the two collectors behind the J Jazz compilation series on the London label BBE Music, which is the single biggest reason a British listener can hear Japanese modern jazz from the late 1960s to the early 1980s without importing records. They are playing a selection from it and talking through it. BBE Music itself started in 1996 as a London club night run by Peter Adarkwah, named after a Universal Robot Band record.
It is upstairs from Peter Cat, in the same building, on the same day. If you did not get a ticket to the sold out show, this is the part of that day you can still have.
DJ Mari* supports GoGo Penguin at KOKO, 16 and 17 November
Not a Japanese headline, and worth knowing about anyway. DJ Mari* is a Japanese born, London based selector who was Head of Programming at Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM and now works with Gondwana Records. She opens for GoGo Penguin at KOKO in Camden on Monday 16 and Tuesday 17 November, doors 7pm, stage 8pm, £33.50 including fees.
Why so little Japanese jazz reaches the United Kingdom
Jazz arrived in Japan in the 1920s and never left. It came in through the port cities, survived a wartime ban as enemy music, and rebuilt itself after 1945 around the jazz kissa, small cafés built on a record collection and a serious sound system, where people went to listen rather than to talk.
The reason most of the music in this programme is unfamiliar here is distribution. Japanese labels pressed for a domestic market, the records rarely crossed, and what did cross went to collectors at collector prices. The reissue wave of the last decade changed that. Palto Flats put Kakashi and Utakata no Hibi back into print in 2015 and 2017, and BBE Music’s J Jazz series did the same for a whole generation of players. Almost everyone on this year’s bill reached a British audience through one of those two routes, which is also why several of them are playing London for the first time in their careers.
For the longer version, see The Rise of Jazz in Japan.
If you can only go to one
- Shuya Okino at The Jazz Social, £14. Cheapest ticket in the Japanese programme, smallest room, and the artist with the longest history behind the decks. Best return for the money on the list.
- Yasuaki Shimizu at Milton Court, from £29. His only British date, a 608 seat hall, and material he has never toured here.
- Kyoto Jazz Massive at Islington Assembly Hall, £33.54. Ten people on stage and the last night of the festival.
- Riyoko Takagi at Toulouse Lautrec, £27 or £31. Four chances, a small club, and the lowest risk of clashing with anything else.
- BBE Music on the FreeStage, free. Costs nothing, takes an afternoon, needs no planning.
Hard to get otherwise
- Yasuaki Shimizu does not tour the United Kingdom. Before this, the nearest thing was a record.
- The ten piece Kyoto Jazz Massive line-up with the Paris orchestra has not been seen in London.
- Both Peter Cat sittings sold out inside weeks, which is the clearest measure of how much appetite there is for this and how rarely it is served.
The programme at a glance
| Date | Show | Venue | Stage time | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sun 15 Nov | Yasuaki Shimizu | Milton Court Concert Hall | 7.30pm | From £29 incl fees |
| Mon 16 and Tue 17 Nov | DJ Mari* with GoGo Penguin | KOKO, Camden | 8pm | £33.50 incl fees |
| Thu 19 Nov | Riyoko Takagi Trio | Toulouse Lautrec, Kennington | 7pm and 9.30pm | £27 incl fees |
| Fri 20 Nov | Riyoko Takagi Trio | Toulouse Lautrec, Kennington | 6pm and 9.30pm | £31 incl fees |
| Sat 21 Nov | BBE Music Japanese Jazz Series | Barbican FreeStage, Level G | 1pm | Free |
| Sat 21 Nov | Haruki Murakami’s Jazz at Peter Cat | Barbican Hall | 5pm and 8.30pm | Sold out |
| Sat 21 Nov | Shuya Okino, DJ set | The Jazz Social, Ropemaker Street | 9pm | £14 incl fees |
| Sun 22 Nov | Kyoto Jazz Massive | Islington Assembly Hall | 7.30pm | £33.54 incl fee |
Planning your visit
Four of the seven sit within a few minutes of each other in the City. Barbican Hall and the FreeStage are in the same building on Silk Street, Milton Court is around the corner on Milton Street, and The Jazz Social is at Citypoint on Ropemaker Street, five minutes from either. Barbican and Moorgate are the stations.
Islington Assembly Hall is on Upper Street, two minutes from Highbury and Islington.
Toulouse Lautrec is on Newington Butts in Kennington, nearest station Elephant and Castle. KOKO is on Camden High Street, next to Mornington Crescent.
Saturday 21 November is the day to build around. The free BBE Music session at 1pm, the Peter Cat sittings at 5pm and 8.30pm, and Shuya Okino at 9pm all happen within a quarter of a mile of each other.
Prices and times were checked against each venue’s own listing on 21 September 2026.
