About
about
rufus lin
Composer, pianist, and Immersive Jazz pioneer
Artist biography: Rufus Lin is a Canadian jazz pianist, contemporary classical music composer, recording artist, and Immersive Jazz pioneer based in Vancouver and Tokyo.
Performance: Since the year 2010, he has given well over 100 solo piano recitals on various stages in Japan, with a focus on Tokyo. In recent years, these have been on a Fazioli concert grand piano at Shibuya Hall. He currently gives frequent recitals in Vancouver as well, on Fazioli grand pianos, including his own concert grand at Lulu Island Winery in Richmond, and the Butterfly Fazioli at Shaw Tower in downtown Vancouver. Rufus also delivers an English-Japanese bilingual performance frequently on YouTube Live, improvising on the piano and singing jazz standards from the Great American Songbook, as well as show tunes, Japanese music and original songs. Above all, Rufus is well known for his rich improvisations on the piano, incorporating both classical and jazz styles. In 2023, Rufus Lin issued an artistic manifesto, defining a new subgenre of jazz he calls “immersive jazz”, and he now performs almost exclusively in that style.
Recording: As a pianist and jazz vocalist, Rufus Lin has released several albums and singles, both as CDs and on streaming platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Music and Spotify. These albums vary in genre, including healing piano, contemporary classical and jazz standards. Rufus is always at work in the recording studio, and is currently working on a multi-genre album of selected preludes and fugues from J S Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, presented in three ways: classical, jazz and arrangements for 17 synthesizers.
Classical music composition: As a composer of classical music, Rufus has published a wide variety of pieces for orchestras, choirs, ensembles and solo instruments, with several pieces for the piano, such as Moonlight Prelude (to be played immediately before Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata), Variations on a theme from Finlandia (Sibelius), Au Canada (a contrapuntal rhapsody on harmonic progressions in O Canada), and many original works. Many of these pieces have been performed by various orchestras and artists in Japan and South Korea, including the Art Aim String Ensemble under Ryuichi Horikoshi, the Kammar Abend Philharmoniker under Hideyuki Koyanagi, and several concert pianists, including South Korean pianist YoonYoung Choi and Japanese pianist Gen Segawa.
Background: Rufus Lin is a Canadian jazz pianist and classical composer. He has performed, as piano soloist, the Grieg concerto and the Mozart K488 concerto, with the Singapore Combined Schools Orchestra under Goh Say Meng. After a successful and varied career as classical music critic for the Sunday Times, television host of “It’s IT” for the Channel News Asia network (conducting sit-down interviews with CEOs of global high tech companies), researcher and faculty member at York University, Toronto; Temasek Polytechnic and Kent Ridge Digital Labs, Singapore; and BCIT, Vancouver BC, Canada, and founder of multiple small businesses, Rufus began giving jazz concert recitals in concert halls in Tokyo in 2010, as a concert jazz pianist, taking a different approach from typical jazz pianists in cocktail lounges and jazz bars. In addition to his work as a performing and recording artist, he occasionally finds himself involved in the patent translation, mobile game and music companies he founded in Vancouver in 2000.
our Labels
our labels
NEW JPOP
(日本語はこちら)
Pop music with Japanese lyrics. The concept is unique: Non-Japanese artists producing J-POP music, with an electro pop feel. Welcome to our newly imagined music genre–the New JPOP. As pioneers in this new genre, we know how hard it is to speak the Japanese language fluently, let alone break...
PUREST JAZZ
(日本語はこちら)
New takes on jazz standards, as well as original material, from artists active in Tokyo, Japan Have you ever noticed that some singers, after a distinguished career, will indulge themselves by releasing an album of jazz standards. Linda Ronstadt did it. So did Rod Stewart and Sting and Willie...
EDGE OF THE ROAD
(日本語はこちら)
Electro-pop in English by Japan-based artists. Get away! Get away from that dotted white line in the middle of the road! Our songs have an edge to them, brought about by the marriage of electronica tracks with contemporary pop styling, and they feature new Japanese artists singing in English,...
DISTINCTLY ODD
Distinctly Odd Records is an eccentric classical music recording label established by Canadian composer Rufus Lin.The aim is to record and distribute fresh interpretations of a wide range of classical music by Japanese and Korean musicians still relatively unknown in the English speaking world.The artists are...
