Saxophonist, composer and producer Yasuaki Shimizu brings a new duo show to Milton Court Concert Hall on Sunday 15 November 2026, playing alongside his sister Mieko Shimizu, a London based singer, songwriter, composer and producer. It is the only UK date on a European tour that also takes in Paris, Ghent, Utrecht, Helsinki and Stockholm.
The concert is part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, which runs from 13 to 22 November 2026. Standard tickets are £29 to £31.50 including fees, and the Barbican box office was still showing seats when we checked on 14 September 2026.
A rare UK date from one of Japanese music's great genre travellers, played as a duo.
The only UK date on a six city European tour
Shimizu announced the run on his own website as Europe Tour 2026. It opens at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris on 3 November, then Miry Concertzaal in Ghent on 4 November, the Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht on 6 November, Tavastia in Helsinki on 8 November and Fasching in Stockholm on 9 November. London on 15 November is the only British stop. The festival adds that he toured North America for the first time in 2025 and sold out every show.
The same announcement says what the duo will play. It describes an evolved and entirely reinterpreted programme built on his 1980s work, naming the albums Kakashi and Utakata no Hibi, with Mieko Shimizu supporting him across every date. The pair are reworking that material rather than reproducing it.
Kakashi in 1982 and Utakata no Hibi in 1983
Kakashi came out in 1982 under Shimizu’s own name. Utakata no Hibi followed in 1983 as the last record by Mariah, the experimental band he led in the early 1980s. Both run Japanese folk and pop melody through electronic, new wave and disco production. The New York label Palto Flats describes Utakata no Hibi as Japanese folk and pop idioms filtered through chamber disco, new wave and synth production.
Neither record was easy to find outside Japan until Palto Flats reissued them, Utakata no Hibi in 2015 as a double vinyl set and Kakashi in 2017. Those reissues are what put Shimizu in front of a Western audience again. They landed in the same years that Japanese city pop was finding listeners abroad through YouTube and vinyl, and the two revivals share an audience even though the music is doing different things.
Mieko Shimizu, the London half of the duo
Mieko Shimizu is based in London and calls herself an experimental composer and performer on her own website. The EFG London Jazz Festival describes her as a boldly nonconformist singer, songwriter, composer and producer. Her albums include Road of Shells and Totem, released in Japan, and My Tentacles and I Bloom, released in the UK.
She has worked with Mick Karn of the band Japan, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Nitin Sawhney, William D Drake of Cardiacs and David Cunningham of The Flying Lizards. David Cunningham also appears in the festival’s list of her brother’s collaborators, alongside Ryuichi Sakamoto, Björk and Van Dyke Parks, so the two of them have at least one working history in common.
Bach’s Cello Suites on tenor saxophone
In the mid 1990s Shimizu recorded what his own biography calls the first ever tenor saxophone interpretations of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suites. They were collected as Bach Box, released in 1997, which won a Record Awards Planning Prize. He went back to Bach in 2015 with a Goldberg Variations arranged for five saxophones and four contrabasses.
That is background rather than a preview. Nothing the Barbican or the festival has published about the Milton Court concert mentions Bach, and the tour announcement points at the 1980s albums.
Event details
- Cost: £29 to £31.50 including fees. Young Barbican £12 for anyone aged 16 to 25. Barbican members pay 20 per cent less with no transaction fee
- Date: Sunday 15 November 2026
- Doors: 7:00pm
- Stage time: 7:30pm
- Venue: Milton Court Concert Hall, Guildhall School of Music and Drama
- Address: Milton Court, 1 Milton Street, London EC2Y 9BH
- Part of: EFG London Jazz Festival 2026, 13 to 22 November
For more information and booking, visit the Barbican website.
Milton Court
Three Japanese shows at EFG London Jazz Festival 2026
Shimizu is one of three Japanese bills at this year’s festival. Haruki Murakami’s Jazz at Peter Cat: A Japanese Jazz Night takes over Barbican Hall on 21 November with three generations of Japanese jazz players, and both performances had sold out when we checked in September 2026. Kyoto Jazz Massive play Islington Assembly Hall on 22 November. For the background to all three, our history of the rise of jazz in Japan covers how the music arrived and what it became there.
