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JAPAN
Kurena Ishikawa
She began playing the double bass during the summer of her freshman year of high school and was discovered by world-renowned pianist Makoto Ozone while still in high school. She enrolled in the Jazz Program at the Kunitachi College of Music, where she studied bass under Yosuke Inoue and Ken Kaneko. In 2021, a video of her performance of “Off The Wall” (by Michael Jackson), recorded at the Cotton Club in Marunouchi, Tokyo, garnered over 2.5 million views on YouTube, catapulting her into the spotlight.
In March 2023, under the production of Makoto Ozone, she made her major-label debut with her first album, *Kurena*, released by the prestigious jazz label Verve Records. Alongside her solo career, she formed the pop unit “soraya” with pianist Kento Tsubosaka in 2022. In 2024, she performed at the “FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL” with soraya; having released two albums to date, she is making a name for herself in the pop music scene as well. In 2025, she performed solo concerts in Hong Kong and Shanghai. On September 16, 2026, she released her self-produced second album, *Garden*.