In 2024, trumpeter Jun Iida made the big decision to leave behind a career in engineering and become a full-time professional musician.
"It was going to be a conversation, you know, to have with the family and the parents," Iida said.
Iida grew up in St. Louis and Pittsburgh and now lives in New York. But he was living in Seattle in 2024 when he came to the KNKX studios for a performance and brought his Pacific Northwest friends—guitarist Martin Budde, pianist Dylan Hayes, bassist Michael Glynn, and drummer Xavier Lecouturier.
Iida grew up feeling some pressure to pursue a career in the sciences or the law, but by playing music, Iida was just following in his mom's footsteps.
"My mother is a Koto player, a Japanese harp. And so, you know, she studied in Japan, she played around St Louis, and then later in Pittsburgh, where we grew up. But, yeah, she always, you know, made it a priority that music was a part of our lives," Iida said.
Iida's mom also wanted her kids to have access to Japanese culture, especially as first generation immigrants in cities like St. Louis and Pittsburgh that don't have big Japanese American populations.
"She really went through hoops to make sure that we were both exposed to and had access to a lot of the cultural elements, as though we would have been growing up in Japan and so, in addition to the classical music influences, she always had Japanese folk music," he said.
On that note, Iida brought the Japanese folk tune "Aka Tombo," a song he said every elementary school kid in Japan would know, to the KNKX Studios.
In Iida's case, a Louis Armstrong album sparked his love for the trumpet, and he went on to absorb the jazz history of St. Louis. Then he listened to everything from legendary Miles Davis to modern trumpeter Keyon Harrold.
More recently, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Iida was a student of jazz and engineering, and that's what brought him to Seattle.
"It's not the sexiest story, but I actually had, I was still working a day job in Los Angeles at the time with that engineering degree from Cleveland, and so I had an offer for position up here in Seattle," he said.
Iida found a welcoming jazz community in Seattle, inspiring him to finish his debut album, Evergreen, released in early 2024. Encouragement came from musicians, venues, educators and radio.
"We always say it takes a village, but you know, having community partners like KNKX, like Ab, it really is kind of this cohesive group of creativity that's going on up here. So that was a really beautiful thing to experience," he said.
Since releasing his first album and making the switch to full time musician, Iida says his worlds have come together.
"For most of my adult life, I've kind of kept the music world and then this other engineering side that I was doing completely separate, including [from] my family. Family and close friends that had never even really heard me play in a professional setting up till a couple of years ago. Honestly, that's been kind of the most fun, being able to share the music with everybody who's close to me," he said.
From his Japanese heritage to the Midwest, Seattle and now New York, Iida's career and musical family, continues to grow.
Songs heard in this episode:
- "Evergreen"
- "Aka Tombo"
- "Forgotten Memories"
