Yokohama Jazz Festival, Yokohama Jazz Promenade

Written by Hiro, Tokyo Swing Dance Society

Event date: October 11-12, 2025

URL of the organizer

This event is an annual jazz festival held in Yokohama every October.Historically, in the early 20th century, Yokohama Port served as a gateway for jazz entering Japan. While Tokyo has since taken over as the main hub, Yokohama still boasts a variety of jazz clubs and cafes, and hosts numerous jazz events.

This year, the festival takes place over two days, October 11-12, featuring many jazz bands. However, for us Lindy Hoppers, it can be quite a challenging jazz festival.

One reason is the diversity of jazz styles. While swing jazz and New Orleans jazz are performed, the schedule is a mixed bag, with genres scattered haphazardly. If you’re spending the day enjoying jazz regardless of style, that’s fine, but our goal is to dance to jazz, and this setup doesn’t quite work for us.

Secondly, the venues are scattered. With only one body to move around, it’s simply exhausting.

Thirdly, both the organizer’s website and printed pamphlets cover not only these two days but also individual jazz events across Yokohama from autumn to winter. This overload of information can be confusing for readers.

Fourthly, most of the free outdoor venues feature amateur bands, but with around 160 bands performing, pinpointing ones suitable for us is a daunting task.

Fifthly, the poor image quality of the 160 band names listed on the website makes them hard to read.

Sixthly, with no other choice, we focus on big bands, but there’s no information on their playing styles or profiles. We’re forced to guess based on band names, and past experience tells us that names don’t always reflect their performance style.

Well, complaining won’t get us anywhere, so let’s take a look anyway, shall we?

First, we’ll exclude all the paid professional venues A, B, and C. Just because they’re professional doesn’t mean they’ll play our kind of music, and typically, those venues don’t allow dancing anyway. Next, we’ll rule out all performances at jazz clubs. Most of these are small venues with no space for dancing, and their schedules often include dates unrelated to these two days. Additionally, we’ll skip the parade events at venues Q and R—dancing while walking with the band is just too exhausting.

Now, let’s get to the main focus: venues D through P. Among these, big bands are performing at venues I, J, K, M, and O, but that still leaves about 60 bands to consider.

Among them, what stands out on Sunday at venue O is the Basie the Last Decade Big Band Tribute to Count Basie and His Orchestra—quite a mouthful of a name. Well, we’ll just have to trust the name here. I checked YouTube videos of the bands performing before and after them, and it seems the Yokohama National University 横浜国立大学 Baysound Jazz Orchestra Reg. sometimes plays Basie-style music. Their junior counterpart, likely made up of first- and second-year students, might be skippable. I watched videos of the other bands at venue O that day, but they’re likely not danceable for us. So, the conclusion for Sunday is the 13:50–3:25 PM slot for the above two bands. Since this venue is far from the others, the rest are automatically ruled out.

Now, let’s backtrack to Saturday and check the venues. But going through countless YouTube videos could take all day. So, with a faint hope that similar types of bands might be grouped at the same venue as Sunday, let’s look at venue O again. What catches the eye are the Sophia University 上智大学 New Swing Jazz Orchestra and the Meiji University 明治大学 New Wave Jazz Orchestra. Their YouTube videos show that Meiji University’s band has an MC announcing they’ll play Basie-style music. Sophia University’s direction isn’t entirely clear, but they seem to play Basie-style pieces at times. I checked videos of the other bands at this venue that day, but they don’t seem to feature our kind of music. Therefore, the conclusion for Saturday is the 12:55–1:35 PM slot for Sophia University, followed by a skip, then the 2:45–3:25 PM slot for Meiji University.