Mount Fuji Jazz Festival is an annual jazz festival held in August in the Lake Yamanaka

Lake Yamanaka

is the biggest of the Fuji Five Lakes. Located in Yamanashi Prefecture near Mount Fuji, Japan, the lake is used for boating, fishing, water-skiing, windsurfing, sightseeing and swimming. If the wind comes from the west, the lake provides a smooth lift for paragliding at Mount Myouyama. There are...

 area, Yamanashi Prefecture

Yamanashi Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of the island of Honshū. The capital is the city of Kōfu.-Pre-history to the 14th century:People have been living in the Yamanashi area for about 30,000 years...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. The three-day festival features musicians from Blue Note Records

Blue Note Records

Blue Note Records is a jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues. At the end of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, Blue Note headquarters...

 and other, performing on different stages. 1986 - 1996. Alfred Lion

Alfred Lion

Alfred Lion was a Jewish German-born American record executive who co-founded Blue Note Records in 1939 Blue Note recorded many of the biggest names in jazz throughout the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.-Biography:...

 came to this festival for the first time in 1986.

Notable artists at the MountFuji Jazz Festival include Andrew Hill

Andrew Hill

Andrew Hill was an American jazz pianist and composer.Hill is recognized as one of the most important innovators of jazz piano in the 1960s...

, Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock

Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...

, Ron Carter

Ron Carter

Ron Carter is an American jazz double-bassist. His appearances on over 2,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, along with Milt Hinton, Ray Brown and Leroy Vinnegar. Carter is also an acclaimed cellist who has recorded numerous times on that...

 James Newton

James Newton

James W. Newton is an American jazz flautist, composer, and conductor.-Biography:From his earliest years, James Newton grew up immersed in the sounds of African American music, including urban blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel. In his early teens he played electric bass guitar, alto saxophone,...

, Bobby Hutcherson

Bobby Hutcherson

Bobby Hutcherson is a jazz vibraphone and marimba player. His vibraphone playing is suggestive of the style of Milt Jackson in its free-flowing melodicism, but his sense of harmony and group interaction is thoroughly modern...

, Michael Brecker

Michael Brecker

Michael Leonard Brecker was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Acknowledged as "a quiet, gentle musician widely regarded as the most influential tenor saxophonist since John Coltrane," he has been awarded 15 Grammy Awards as both performer and composer and was inducted into Down Beat Jazz...

, Jackie McLean

Jackie McLean

John Lenwood McLean was an American jazz alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader and educator, born in New York City.-Biography:McLean's father, John Sr., played guitar in Tiny Bradshaw's orchestra...

, Jazz Messengers, George Kawaguchi, McCoy Tyner

McCoy Tyner

McCoy Tyner is a jazz pianist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet and a long solo career.-Early life:...

, Stanley Jordan

Stanley Jordan

Stanley Jordan is an American jazz/jazz fusion guitarist and pianist, best known for his development of the tapping technique for the guitar....

, Dianne Reeves

Dianne Reeves

Dianne Reeves is an American jazz singer. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado.-Early life:Reeves was born in Detroit, Michigan to a very musical family. Her father, who died when she was two years old, was also a singer. Her mother, Vada Swanson, played trumpet. A cousin, George Duke, is a...

, Tony Williams, Chaka Khan

Chaka Khan

Chaka Khan , frequently known as the Queen of Funk, is a 10-time Grammy Award winning American singer-songwriter who gained fame in the 1970s as the frontwoman and focal point of the funk band Rufus. While still a member of the group in 1978, Khan embarked on a successful solo career...

, Don Pullen

Don Pullen

Don Pullen was an American jazz pianist and organist. Pullen developed a strikingly individual style throughout his career. He composed masterworks ranging from blues to bebop and modern jazz...

, Sadao Watanabe

Sadao Watanabe (musician)

is an influential Japanese jazz musician who plays the alto saxophone, sopranino saxophone and flute. He is known for his Bossa Nova recordings, although his work encompasses a large range of styles with collaborations from musicians all over the world. Sadao first began learning music at the age...

, Chick Corea

Chick Corea

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...

, Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences...

, Terumasa Hino, Bob Belden, John Scofield

John Scofield

John Scofield , often referred to as "Sco," is an American jazz guitarist and composer, who has played and collaborated with Miles Davis, Dave Liebman, Joe Henderson, Charles Mingus, Joey Defrancesco, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Pat Martino, Mavis Staples, Phil Lesh, Billy Cobham,...

, Lee Ritenour

Lee Ritenour

Lee Mack Ritenour is an American jazz guitarist who has recorded over 42 albums, appeared on over 3000 sessions, and has charted over 30 instrumental and vocal contemporary jazz hits since 1976. One of his most popular songs was the smash hit, “Is It You” in 1981. Ritenour is considered to be a...

, Junko Onishi, US3

US3

Us3 is a jazz-rap group founded in London in 1991. Their name was inspired by a Horace Parlan recording produced by Alfred Lion, the founder of Blue Note Records. On their debut album, Hand on the Torch, Us3 used samples from the Blue Note Records catalogue, all originally produced by...

, Joe Henderson, Murakami PONTA Shuichi and Pat Metheny

Pat Metheny

Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny is an American jazz guitarist and composer.One of the most successful and critically acclaimed jazz musicians to come to prominence in the 1970s and '80s, he is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects...

.

Live under the sky

Live under the sky

Live under the sky was an annual jazz festival held in summer, July and August, at the Denen Coliseum and Yomiuri Land in Tokyo and other area, Japan. The multiple day festival featured musicians from Japan and other countries performing on different stages...

 (established in 1977), Newport Jazz Festival in Madarao

Newport Jazz Festival in Madarao

Newport Jazz Festival in Madarao was an annual jazz festival held in summer, July and August at Madarao, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. The several-day festival featured musicians from Japan and overseas performing on different stages. Owners of pension hotels in the Madarao ski resort wanted to hold...

 (established in 1982) and Mount Fuji Jazz Festival (established in 1986) are the big 3 jazz festival in the history of jazz in Japan.