2 shows, 8 & 10

WWOZ will live broadcast the 8pm set: www.wwoz.org/listen/player/

Yoshio Toyama and the Dixie Saints are masters at playing classic New Orleans styled jazz. Yoshio’s wife Keiko plays banjo & piano while he plays trumpet and sings like his idol, Louis Armstrong. Yoshio Toyama fell in love with the music of “Pops” as a teenager, and he and Keiko came to New Orleans to learn to play jazz in 1968. They were newlyweds living in a little apartment above Bourbon Street, learning from such masters as Percy Humphrey and “Sweet Emma” Barrett. In 1973, they went home to Japan and they’ve been playing traditional jazz ever since. Yoshio is now known as the “Satchmo of Japan”. Yoshio and Keiko started the Wonderful World of Jazz Foundation in 1994 after visiting New Orleans and seeing how things had changed since they’d left.  They started gathering instruments and donations, and every year when they come for Satchmo Summer Fest, they bring gifts to the young people of New Orleans. So far, their foundation has donated nearly 800 musical instruments to local schoolchildren.