Benjamin Herman Trio + Tomoaki Baba — 3 November 2026, Jamboree (Barcelona)

Jazz

The Dutch saxophonist brings “The Tokyo Sessions” with the Japanese tenor who recorded it, and plays Girona’s Sunset the night before

Benjamin Herman’s trio play Jamboree Sala 1, on Plaça Reial, on Tuesday 3 November, in two sets: one at seven in the evening and the other at half past eight. The listing does not say which of the two is the start of the concert. General admission is €24 and the members’ price is €20. MasiMas Live organise it.

Four of them play: Herman on alto saxophone, Thomas Pol on double bass, Jimmi Hueting on drums and the Japanese saxophonist Tomoaki Baba on tenor, the guest for the whole of the album tour.

The record they bring is “The Tokyo Sessions”, which came out on 27 March through DOX Records. They recorded it in April 2025 at Tokyo’s Studio Dede with engineer Akihito Yoshikawa, and Herman invited Japanese musicians in: Otomo Yoshihide on guitar, Baba on tenor and Shinpei Ruike on trumpet, plus two traditional wind instruments, Akihito Obama’s shakuhachi and Ko Ishikawa’s shō. He gave the recordings their final shape back in the Netherlands with Hueting producing. The result runs close to fifty-five minutes, with three bonus tracks, and sets acoustic jazz against electronics and samples, no wave and free improvisation.

Of Baba, the venue points to his album “Electric Rider” (Universal Music, 2024) and his work on the soundtrack of the animated film “Blue Giant”.

The two Catalan dates are also the only two in Spain, and they run back to back: Girona’s Sunset Jazz Club on 2 November and Jamboree on the 3rd. Before that they are due at Finland’s Tampere Jazz Happening on 31 October, and straight afterwards they head back to the Netherlands — the Paradiso in Amsterdam on the 5th, Rotown in Rotterdam on the 6th and Doornroosje in Nijmegen on the 7th.

Herman was born in London, grew up in the Netherlands and leads the New Cool Collective. Once the European leg is over he returns to Japan: Nagasaki City Jazz on 14 and 15 November, and two nights in Tokyo on the 20th and the 21st.

Text by Aina Torrents