For those unaware, the Temple University Jazz Band has traversed the country and the world under the leadership of Grammy-winning trumpeter Terell Stafford, performing at prestigious venues like Dizzy’s Club at Lincoln Center in New York City, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and traveling internationally to Germany and the Netherlands. Over Spring Break in March of 2025 the gifted ensemble notched even more miles with its first-ever trip to Japan.

The culmination of that five-day tour was a rapturously received two-set concert at the renowned nightclub Akasaka B-flat in Tokyo. That celebratory performance is captured in all its globetrotting glory on Live From Japan, the latest release by the TUJB on BCM+D Records.

Set for release on February 6th, 2026, Live From Japan, Volume 1 showcases a high-energy, vigorously swinging performance by the big band, its chemistry forged in the classroom but strengthened by the bonds that only a grueling foreign tour can build. That was exactly why Stafford, director of jazz studies and chair of instrumental studies at Temple’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, worked so tirelessly to make the trip a reality.

1. Squatty Rue
2. Jack the Bear
3. I Just Found Out About Love
4. I Didn’t Know About You
5. Eye of the Hurricane
6. Fantasia
7. Black and Tan Fantasy

Directed by Grammy Winner Terell Stafford and commemorating its first-ever tour of Japan, this stunning new live recording opens on the exhilarating jump jive of Squatty Rue and the twist and turns, dips and flips of the decadent Jack the Bear, and then we are graced with the sheer elegance of I Just Found Out About Love, the luxuriant balladry of I Didn’t Know About You, before the controlled freneticism of Eye of the Hurricane is brought forth, the set rounding out on what is notably the album’s centerpiece, an absolutely stunning Fantasia, written specifically for the band by Tokyo native and Temple alum Yoichi Uzeki, coming to an all-too-soon close on the alluringly impassioned Black and Tan Fantasy.

Official Purchase Link