ambassadors | CASIO SINGAPORE

A jazz artist for the hip-hop generation, José James artfully blurs the lines between traditional and contemporary jazz, hip-hop, soul, funk, pop and rock. He has released 11 critically-acclaimed albums in as many years for labels such as Brownswood, Impulse, Blue Note and his own co-founded Rainbow Blonde Records, and is the recipient of both the Edison Award and L'Académie du Jazz Grand Prix. James has collaborated with many notable artists such as Flying Lotus, Robert Glasper, Lalah Hathaway, Ledisi, Aloe Blacc and Jason Moran.

A celebrated international performer, James has presented his work at venues such as The Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, Ancienne Belgique and Billboard Live Tokyo, and has performed as a guest artist with McCoy Tyner, Laura Mvula and the Jazz at Lincoln Center, Melbourne Symphony and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestras.

Benny Sings is a prolific songwriter, producer and artist from Amsterdam. Benny has made his name over a 2-decade career as a singer, songwriter and producer, with the the critically acclaimed ‘Music’ released in 2021 on Stones Throw Records.

The album ’Music’  includes the singles ‘Music’, ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Rolled Up’ ft Mac DeMarco and ‘Nobody’s Fault’ ft Tom Misch and accumulated over 75 millions streams to date.

Benny has honed a signature sound while creating a colorful catalog of essential pop gems that have led to loyal global following, with fans including John Mayer, Anderson .Paak and Jamie Cullum. Benny collaborated with a wide range of artists like Kenny Beats, Cory Henry, PJ Morton, Marc Rebillet, Emily King, Goldlink, Free Nationals, Mayer Hawthorne, Surfaces, Mocky, MadeinTyo, Rae Khalil & Cornelius. He co-wrote and produced platinum awarded singles and chart topping albums.

His music has appeared on HBO’s ‘Girls’ and ‘Love Life’ Netflix’s ‘Love Life’ &’Easy’. Benny Sings has also composed for brands like Apple and Kirin and songs for the score of the Japanese Netflix show ‘Carol and Tuesday.’

The Amsterdam-based singer played sold-out shows from LA to Tokyo to Amsterdam. He played at festivals such as Lowlands, Down The Rabbit Hole & Into the Great Wide Open. Benny Sings’ success abroad followed with Asian, European and American tours and festivals such as Outside Lands (US), Hollywood Bowl (venue, US), Montreux Jazz Festival (Suisse), Corona Capital (Mexico), Primavera Sound (Spain), Superbockemstock (Portugal) & Corona Sunset (Japan)

The 20th anniversary is the start of a period celebrating the past successes but also the start of a lot of new music!

“I’ll always be amazed by the magic of music – how something can spring into being that simply transcends everything.”

Kit Downes is a BBC Jazz Award winning, Mercury Music Award nominated solo recording artist for ECM Records. He has toured the world playing piano, church organ and harmonium with his own bands (‘ENEMY’, ‘Troyka’ and ‘Elt’) as well as with artists such as Squarepusher, Bill Frisell, ‘Empirical‘, Andrew Cyrille, Sofia Jernberg, Benny Greb, Mica Levi and Sam Amidon.

Kit performs solo pipe organ and solo piano concerts – as well as playing in collaborations with saxophonist Tom Challenger, cellist Lucy Railton, composer Shiva Feshareki, saxophonist Ben van Gelder and with the band ‘ENEMY’ (with Petter Eldh and James Maddren).

He is also currently working with violinist Aidan O’Rourke, drummer Seb Rochford, composer Max de Wardener and in the organ trio ‘Deadeye’ with Reinier Baas and Jonas Burgwinkel.

He has written commissions for Cheltenham Music Festival, London Contemporary Orchestra, Biel Organ Festival, Ensemble Klang at ReWire Festival, the Scottish Ensemble, Cologne Philharmonie and the Wellcome Trust. He also performed as part of the National Theatre production of ‘Network’ from 2017-2018, featuring actor Bryan Cranston.

He has performed solo organ concerts at the Elb Philharmonie in Hamburg, Lausanne Cathedral, Flagey in Brussels, the Royal Albert Hall in London as well as the Southbank Royal Festival Hall, Rochester Jazz Festival (US), St Olafs Minneapolis (US), Stavanger Konserthus, Aarhus Philharmonic Musikhuset, Darmstadt Organ Festival, Stuttgart Organ Festival, Laurenskerke in Rotterdam, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Berlin Jazz Festival, and the BBC Proms amongst many others.

He holds a fellowship at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he himself studied and now teaches. He has twice been awarded 1st place in Downbeat’s Critics Poll Rising Star for Organ and Keyboard categories respectively, and his ECM records ‘Obsidian‘, ‘Dreamlife of Debris‘ and ‘Vermillion‘ have been released to much critical acclaim.

Kiefer is a pianist and producer. Aside from his solo released on Stones Throw, he is also a frequent collaborator with Mndsgn's live trio, among others. He began playing piano as a child and producing beats at around age twelve, moving from San Diego to L.A. to study under renowned jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell at UCLA’s Jazz Studies program. There, he started thinking about the connection between the jazz piano he studied and the beats he created outside of school. While his peers were performing over live instrumentation, Kiefer produced electronic beats free from sampled melodies or drum breaks.

Born in 1995, Hayato Sumino won the Grand Prix of the Special Class of the PTNA Piano Competition while he was a graduate student at the University of Tokyo in 2018. This was the start of his full-fledged musical career.

In 2021, he was a semi-finalist at the XVIII International Chopin Piano Competition. In 2019, he won the third prize at the Lyon International Piano Competition, and in 2017, he won the gold medal at International Chopin Competition in Asia, and many other prizes. He has performed with : Hamburger Symphoniker, Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok , Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra, Gunma Symphony Orchestra, and FILARMONICA BRASOV. He studied with Jean-Marc Luisada, Katsuko Kaneko, and Tomoaki Yoshida.

He graduated from the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology in March 2020, and received the University of Tokyo President’s Award. He has been engaged in research on music information processing at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) for six months since September 2018.

Currently, in addition to performing concerts in Japan and abroad, he also writes, arranges, and performs his own music under the name of “Cateen” on YouTube, with over 1,000,000 subscribers and 100 million views (as of June 2022). His unique style, a fusion of classical techniques, arrangements, and improvisational skills, has been well received by many fans.

He has performed with orchestras in Hamburg and Budapest, and has given recitals in Paris, Vienna, Poland, and other cities to great acclaim. In December 2019, he held his first solo recital tour in five cities in Japan. In the following year, he made his debut at Suntory Hall, which tickets sold out on the day of release. In June 2021, he made his debut at Blue Note Tokyo. In 2022, his 9-city nationwide tour was held with its final performance at the Tokyo International Forum Hall A.

In December 2020, he released his first album “HAYATOSM” (eplus music), which won 8th place on the Oricon daily chart. He played piano and arranged all the songs in the album “Sumi Shimamoto (character voice of Nausicaa) sings Ghibli Renewal Piano Version” (Warner).

Since 2021, he has been a CASIO electronic musical instrument ambassador and Steinway artist.

While building a solid position in classical music, he is attracting attention as a truly new type of pianist who carefully focuses on all music that beyond genres.

The Japanese furniture company “Seki Furniture” is based in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. They wholesale to furniture stores nationwide, as well as carrying out various contract work throughout Japan, in addition to running their own interior furniture stores. Seki Furniture bases their corporate philosophy on a strong desire to creating new lifestyles for the world and providing happiness and excitement to people. To that end they are focused on the planning and development of many original products and brands.

CRASH GATE is at the foreground of this philosophy, proposing unique products that allow customers to experience new lifestyles through various collaborations that transcend genres. They have teamed with Casio for the first time ever to create the original piano stool, “CC-7” for use with digital pianos.

CRASH GATE is the retail arm of CRUSH CRASH PROJECT, which develops an interior furniture collection that combines a sense of playfulness with a desire to experiment in order to create enriching and exciting new products. Their way of thinking is not bound by general rules or stereotypes, which allows them to create unique lifestyle spaces full of originality. They are focused on deliviring products that allow you to create the most comfortable living space possible by mixing and matching items to match your own unqiue style and way of living.

“ligne roset” was founded in Briord, a suburb of the city of Lyon, France in 1860.

As one of France's leading international lifestyle brands, it has 700 sales locations across 67 countries around the world.

They collaborate with world-famous designers to produce a fully contemporary approach to lifestyle products.

In addition to their sophisticated designs, the wide range of fabrics and color variations that are released every year are eye catching and stylish, and have gained them a lot of fans worldwide.

The world's most influential fashion magazine "VOGUE", was first published in the United States in 1892 and is currently published in 20 countries. The Japanese edition of VOGUE was first launched in July 1999. The magazine is well known for its breathtaking visuals created in collaboration with the world's top photographers, and purveying the latest fashion and beauty information as well as current cultural and social trends to create the "World of VOGUE".