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Nathan Tokunaga
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Nathan Tokunaga has had a busy year. In 2025, the Peninsula-raised jazz musician helped lead Stanford Jazz Workshop’s Miles Ahead Big Band in the Essentially Ellington competition at New York’s Lincoln Center, worked with a 50-piece orchestra and pianist Charles Chen to record Chen’s new album, and most recently, received a Young Arts Award, which recognizes “excellence in visual, literary, and performing arts.”
Heather Zimmerman
Palo Alto Weekly
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In just a little over a dozen years, 17-year-old Nathan Tokunaga has had opportunities and experiences that many adult musicians don’t have in a lifetime. As one fan described Nathan after a recent performance: “Unbelievable, sweetly mellow, much too young to be so good!”
Lew Shaw
The Syncopated Times
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Nathan brought his lyrical self to the September 16, 2025 revival meeting at Winnie’s Jazz Bar (66 west 38th Street, in the Refinery Hotel) and was invited to sit in with Danny Tobias’ Lucky 7 for a pair of performances. Jam-session etiquette prevailed: here’s what we are going to be playing, swim or drown. Nathan swam with quiet Olympian grace.
Michael Steinman
Jazz Lives
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Nathan is 17, but that fact is not as important as his deep musical maturity. He plays with elegance, passion, and restraint — everything from SHREVEPORT STOMP to SCRAPPLE FROM THE APPLE. Most moving were his two ballad performances: not everyone, no matter their age, can sing melodies with such conviction and assurance.
Michael Steinman
Jazz Lives
He has technical mastery of the clarinet and other reeds, no small thing, but what he has in abundance is a fine musical intelligence. In every phrase, he shows his deep understanding of the tradition, the history of the music, but he isn’t an A.I. creation: he goes for himself, phrasing in his own way. And we are glad.
Michael Steinman
Jazz Lives
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Nathan’s Fearless Five is a high school jazz band founded a little over a year ago with social justice and community at the core of its mission. Nathan Tokunaga formed the band to raise funds for the New Orleans Musician Clinic, a non-profit that promotes healthcare equity to benefit musicians without medical insurance.
Sydney Tao
The ScotCenter
