Kiyoshi Kitagawa
Japanese-American jazz double-bassist (1958–2026)
Kiyoshi Kitagawa (Japanese: 北川潔; December 5, 1958 – April 28, 2026) was a Japanese-American jazz double bassist.
Life and career
Kitagawa first played bass guitar and was in a rock band as a high school student. He switched to double bass while a student at Kansei Gakuin Daigaku, and in the 1980s, performed with Sadayasu Fujii and Takashi Furuya. In October 1988, he immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City. Kitagawa joined the Harper Brothers (Philip and Winard) and worked with Kenny Barron, Andy Bey, Jon Faddis, Kenny Garrett, Jimmy Heath, Susannah McCorkle, Makoto Ozone, Ben Riley, and Terell Stafford in the late 1980s and 1990s. He worked with Barron again several times in the 2000s, as well as with Brian Blade and Danny Grissett, and in the 2010s, with Regina Carter and Charles McPherson.
He received Grammy Award nominations for Kenny Barron's Book of Intuition and Beyond This Place, in 2017 and 2025, respectively.
Kitagawa died on April 28, 2026, at the age of 67.
Discography
As leader
Ancestry (Atelier Sawano, 2004)
Prayer (Atelier Sawano, 2005)
Solo (Atelier Sawano, 2006)
Live at Tsutenkaku (Atelier Sawano, 2006)[DVD-Video]
I'm Still Here (Atelier Sawano, 2007)
Solo 2 (Atelier Sawano, 2008) – with photo album
Live in Japan (Atelier Sawano, 2008) – compilation; recorded live in 2005
Walkin' Ahead (Atelier Sawano, 2015)
Turning Point (Atelier Sawano, 2017)
Spring Night (Atelier Sawano, 2020)
As sideman
With Makoto Ozone
Makoto Ozone – The Trio (Polydor, 1997)
Dear Oscar (Polydor, 1998)
Three Wishes (Verve, 1998)
No Strings Attached (Polydor, 1999)
Ballads (Universal Music Japan, 2008)
With Kenny Barron
Images (Sunnyside, 2003)
The Traveler (Sunnyside, 2008)
Book of Intuition (Impulse!, 2016)
Concentric Circles (Blue Note, 2018)
Beyond This Place (Artwork, 2024)
With others
Andy Bey, American Song (Savoy Jazz, 2004)
Jon Faddis, Teranga (Koch, 2006)
Kenny Garrett, Triology (Warner Bros., 1995)
The Harper Brothers, Remembrance Live at The Village Vanguard (Verve, 1990)
Jimmy Heath, You or Me (SteepleChase, 1995)
Susannah McCorkle, From Bessie to Brazil (Concord Jazz, 1993)
Ben Riley, Memories of T (Concord Jazz, 2006)
Dan Rose, Fountains (MidLantic, 2003)
Terell Stafford, Fields of Gold (Nagel-Heyer, 2000) – recorded in 1999
Dayna Stephens, Today Is Tomorrow (Criss Cross Jazz, 2012)
References
Sources
Sugiyama, Kazunori (2004). Kernfeld, Barry (ed.).
“Kiyoshi Kitagawa” enters the record as japanese-American jazz double-bassist (1958–2026). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kiyoshi, Kitagawa and Japanese-American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Kiyoshi Kitagawa” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Kiyoshi, Kitagawa and Japanese-American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17352868. VIAF identifies the subject as 85402247. The Library of Congress control number is nr98009318. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 2026, 1988 and 2017.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kiyoshi Kitagawa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.