Brian Yasuhiro Seymour is a woodwind musician and composer. He grew up in Southern California, where he began his music career, starting to play the violin at the age of 6. When he was ten, he took up alto saxophone. Brian began studying jazz and woodwind doubling in high school. He studied and played the clarinet, participating in honor bands in Southern California. Additionally, he played gigs at restaurants, hotels, and jazz clubs in the area. In the summer 2007, Brian performed in France, Switzerland (Montreaux Jazz Festival), and Spain with his high school band. It was also during Brian’s high school years that he began composing music. He wrote music for his band and arranged for his high school jazz ensemble, and began studying under Jay Mason, the baritone saxophonist of Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band.
After high school in 2010, Brian moved to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music. Some of the teachers he studied under include: Dino Govoni, George Garzone, Barbara LaFitte, Tiger Okoshi, Walter Beasley, and David Santoro. He more vastly explored woodwind doubling, picking up oboe and bass clarinet. In the summer of 2012, Brian began performing around Tokyo and Chiba, Japan, and went to various live houses and jam sessions.
Brian finished his studies at Berklee in December of 2014 and received two bachelor degrees: one in Jazz Performance and one in Contemporary Writing and Production. He also completed a minor in Video Game Scoring.
In 2014, Brian's original composition, "Mother Earth Suite" was performed by Teros String Quartet at the Valdres Sommersymfoni in Valdres, Norway.
After graduating from Berklee, Brian started working for Carnival Cruise Lines as a Showband Musician on the Carnival Elation in 2015.
Since the fall of 2015, Brian has been living in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, where he has been teaching various woodwind instruments and jazz theory; and performing at various restaurants, hotels, live houses, and concert halls. He has also recorded woodwinds for television commercials, video games and albums. Some of his works include those of SMBC, Bandai Namco, and Butterfly.
In 2018, Brian performed in Seoul, South Korea in the group Brian Seymour and Friends.
In 2022, Brian played various woodwinds for the reading drama, “Biome” in which Kabuki actor Kankuro Nakamura was starring. He also played the tenor saxophone for the Tokyo performances of La La Land in Concert: A Celebration of Hollywood in August of the same year under the direction of Justin Hurwitz (Composer for Whiplash and La La Land) and shared the stage with Randy Kerber, Eijiro Nakagawa, and Atsushi Ozawa to name a few.
Brian is a Syos mouthpiece artist. Click Here for more on Syos!
