On the Sunny Side of the Street [*]

Yoko Noge

Yoko Noge (born 1957) is a Japanese-born jazz and blues singer, pianist, and composer. A native of Osaka, Noge took piano lessons for a brief period in childhood; growing up in Osaka in the 1960s and 1970s led to heavy exposure to the blues. As a teenager, she and several fellow students from her high school formed the Yoko Blues Band, which earned first prize, and a recording contract, in a television contest. Attracted by the blues scene in the city, Noge moved to Chicago in 1984 to pursue a career in jazz and blues; beginning as a singer, she took piano lessons from Erwin Helfer and in the early 1990s established the Jazz Me Blues Band, which has since become a fixture on the Chicago musical scene. She has written a number of compositions for her group whi… more »