Seattle jazz vocalists will once again audition to perform in Japan

There’s a long history of jazz sisterhood between Seattle and Kobe, Japan, Seattle’s sister city since 1957.

Since 2000, the Shinkaichi neighborhood in Kobe has hosted the Kobe Jazz Vocal Queen Contest, during which Japanese women jazz singers compete for the chance travel to Seattle as part of a unique jazz exchange program. In the spirit of reciprocity, the Seattle-based Seattle-Kobe Sister City Association , started a corresponding program in 2005 that sends Seattle-based women jazz singers to Kobe.

After 15 years, both programs were forced to go on hiatus during the pandemic. The Kobe competition returned in 2022, but it’s taken a few more years to restart the Seattle audition, which allows both high school and adult women vocalists to compete. On October 13 at The Triple Door, the Seattle-Kobe Female Jazz Vocalist Audition will return for the first time since 2019.

Singer, songwriter, and composer Taylor Zickefoose won the high school division of the Seattle-Kobe Audition in 2012, and then won the audition again as an adult in 2015.

Zickefoose bubbles over with enthusiasm when talking about the supportive women the contest brought into her orbit.

“I'm still friends with a lot of the previous winners on Facebook, and I see them taking pictures and performing together or going to each other's concerts,” she said.

With her wins, Zickefoose had two opportunities to go to Kobe and enjoy the “unbelievable experience” of performing in front of Japanese audiences and taking in the harbor city’s sights.

The birthplace of Japanese jazz

Both the Seattle and Kobe Jazz Vocal events stem from the jazz-loving port city of Kobe, Japan. Shinkaichi is the downtown entertainment district of Kobe, and the spot where Japanese jazz was born in 1923 , when a Japanese violinist named Ichiro Ida formed the country’s first jazz band, the Laughing Stars.

Since before World War II, jazz concerts have been held at theaters and parks throughout the district. Over 100 years since its arrival, the American artform continues to be part of Kobe’s identity, even touted in official marketing from the city. In 1953, Shinkaichi became the site of Japan’s first jazz café; in 1971, the first high school jazz band in Japan formed at Kobe Murano Technical High School; and in 2014, the Japan Anniversary Association designated April 4 as “Kobe Jazz Day.”

Four years after Kobe and Seattle made their sister city status official, the Seattle-Kobe Sister City Association (SKSCA) was established to help facilitate Seattle’s exchange with Kobe. This was the first time either city had formed such a relationship, and it materialized from a mutual desire to connect around business, education, government, and culture.

Over the last six decades, this connection has resulted in the exchanges of gifts, including the Japanese pine and cherry trees at Kobe Terrace Park in Seattle's International District, and the Kobe Bell Meditation Garden at the Seattle Center. It’s also fostered direct exchanges between cultural organizations, including the youth organizations like the YMCA, Rotary Club service organizations, sports team, and of course, this jazz vocalist exchange.

Nurturing friendship through music

Organizers said lingering pandemic restrictions, hesitancy around social gathering, and changes in personnel inside the Seattle-Kobe Sister City Association, all contributed to the Seattle audition's multi-year hiatus.

“Nobody really knew how to handle a pandemic,” said SKSCA board member Brian Chu, referring to how difficult it was for most performance-based events to adapt during a time when people couldn’t convene together.

Chu also noted that several key board members who’d been big proponents of the Jazz Queen audition moved on to other opportunities during this time, which led SKSCA to suspend the competition in 2020.

“We had to take a minute to just collect ourselves and make sure that we would be able to not just restart the program, but restart it in a way that would make it sustainable going forward,” Chu said.

Leah Natale , a Seattle vocalist who won the Seattle-Kobe Jazz Vocalist Audition in 2013 and who joined the SKSCA board in 2023, is a big reason the event is finally returning. Along with being an accomplished jazz vocalist who performs throughout Seattle with Ambiance Jazz, Natale has previous professional experience as a program manager and grant writer.

“Leah came on last year and that was a big change in that then we had this infusion of talent onto our board who is very intimately familiar with the competition and with jazz and the local jazz scene,” Chu said. “I think that was the big push that we needed; Leah's commitment to really being the face of our new jazz program.”

For Natale, who calls her trip to Kobe after winning the Seattle-Kobe audition in 2013 a “life-changing experience,” getting this audition back up and running is a labor of love. Judging the Kobe-based contest in 2023 and 2024, solidified her conviction.

“Being there again and being surrounded by this amazing, magical cultural exchange, I knew I had to come back to Seattle and get this program going again. Because it truly is amazing, watching people, even people who don't speak the language, communicate through music,” Natale said.

Chu, who works as a senior administrator at local nonprofit Mary’s Place, also brings unique strengths to this SKSCA program. Along with having on-the-ground experience living and teaching in Japan, Chu has been involved with SKSCA for more than 10 years. He first got involved with the Seattle-Kobe Female Jazz Vocalist Audition as a volunteer photographer in 2013, and now this year he’s helping plan the audition.

“[I’ve] met many of the Japanese vocalists who have come over and developed long lasting friendships. And when I visit in Japan, I try to go to their shows and really continue the process of supporting the exchange,” Chu said.

Since May 2023, Chu, Natale, and Karin Zaugg Black, the previous president of SKSCA, have worked on the audition’s return, completely on a volunteer basis. Over the last couple months, Natale and Chu spent an estimated seven to 10 hours per week on the contest, doing everything from communicating with the venue and running PR statements to collecting applications and chasing down application fees.

Sustaining and refreshing the tradition

As the Seattle audition returns, it will be similar to how it was before the pandemic, with a few changes that Chu and Natale hope will reinvigorate the nearly 20 year-old event in this new phase.

True to the audition’s previous format, the event will begin with sets from four Seattle-area high school finalists and then the six adult finalists will perform. Each contestant will have the chance to perform two songs with one accompanist for the panel of three judges including Earshot Magazine Editor Rayna Mathis, Japanese-American trumpeter Jun Iida , and Paige Hansen , a musician and host of KNKX’s Midday Jazz radio show.

Bringing the high school division back with the audition was important to SKSCA, who are well-aware of Seattle’s reputation for high school jazz talent and eager to see it showcased and nurtured.

“A big part of our desire to start this up is to provide our high school vocalists with opportunity during such a foundational time in their life. We've had so many vocalists who have then gone on to incredible things,” Chu said.

Singer Taylor Zickefoose, who’s currently a songwriting fellow with the Bob Dylan Center, turned the audition into the next step in her musical career.

Her second performance in Kobe was captured on video, and she submitted that tape as her audition to Kunst-Universitåt Graz, or The University of Music and Performing Arts, in Graz, Austria.

“That [video] allowed me to go there because they accepted that as my audition. And so, it really opened up a lot of doors musically for me, which I'm really thankful for,” Zickefoose said.

While the format and objective of the event remains the same, Chu and Natale decided to present this year's audition at The Triple Door, rather than Jazz Alley, where it's occurred since its inception. The organizers thought this would be a fitting time in the audition's history to highlight another venue that's friendly to the local jazz community.

“Seattle has a bunch of different places that are staples in our local community," Chu said. "How do we also incorporate those community spots into our programming to just increase inclusivity and really try to just expand our consideration of what we consider to be 'jazz in Seattle?'”

For the first time ever, this year’s audition will include a performance from Kobe’s newly-crowned 2024 Jazz Vocal Queen, Motomi Iono, who will perform as the judges deliberate. This idea was drawn directly from how they do things at the Kobe contest.

“Having had the opportunity to go there and be a judge, I get to see how they run their competition…they’re super efficient,” Natale said.

During her Seattle visit, Iono will also be performing for students at Hamilton International Middle School in Wallingford and in the International Women in Jazz Concert Oct. 12 at the Royal Room, presented by SKSCA in partnership with the local nonprofit, Seattle Women in Jazz.

As these Seattle-Kobe jazz exchange events near, Natale and Chu are excited that SKSCA is starting to reciprocate Kobe’s love and support for jazz music and women vocalists again.

“Music does transcend a lot of other political and social challenges and barriers, and it's able to be a pure expression of relationship and friendship,” Chu said. “That's what I think this audition represents.”