Yagi Masao

Yagi Masao (November 14, 1932 - March 4, 1991) was a Japanese pianist who became devoted to American jazz very early in the wave of Japanese enthusiasm for that music. Robin D. G. Kelley's, in his biography of Thelonious Monk, says that before his inaugural 1963 tour, "Monk's greatest champion in Japan was not a critic but a pianist named Yagi Masao. In 1959, the twenty-six-year-old pianist formed his own group featuring several Monk tunes in their repertoire, culminating in his debut LP, Masao Yagi Plays Thelonious Monk, recorded in the summer of 1960."