about me!

Jazz Vocalist and Lyrics Translator,
Emi Higashi

Born and raised in Tokyo Japan, Emi grew up with music in her blood. Her mother belonged to a Japanese folk song club and she always took her little daughter Emi, to the rehearsals and sometimes sang with her. Her father loved listening to a variety of music such as jazz, latin, American pop, country music, screen music and etc.

She started practicing the electric organ when she was four years old. The singing voices of Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra were her bedtime lullabies when she was a child. That was the big influence on her music. Emi made her first performance on the stage at the age of six.

In her mid-twenties, Emi worked as a graphic designer in a surfing magazine, and after leaving this job, she went to Britain to improve her English.

Her professional singing career started in 2000. She joined an a-cappella vocal group as a lead vocalist, and the group sang at a lot of wedding ceremonies. She decided to go solo in 2002. Since then she has performed in many Tokyo jazz clubs. In 2013, Higashi went to New York City to improve her singing skills, so she took jazz lessons from Cynthia Scott, who is one of the jazz masters and used to played with Ray Charles.

Emi has also translated the lyrics of jazz standards from English into Japanese since 2010. Her website has approximately 170 songs translated, is quite popular now and the number of visitors exceeded 1.8 million in 2015. Furthermore, several times her translations have been broadcasted on TV across Japan.

Ms. Emi Higashi enjoys listening to Wynton Kelly, Carmen McRea, Billie Holiday, Wes Montgomery, Diana Krall, and other jazz geniuses.