Lisa Ono

Lisa Ono (vocals, guitar), Masaki Hayashi (piano). Born in São Paulo, Lisa Ono grew up between Brazil and Japan, two countries that would forever mark her artistic identity. She spent her childhood in Brazil until the age of ten and, at fifteen, she began to sing and play the guitar. Her debut album, Catupiry (1989), was the starting point of a career that, thanks to her natural voice, rhythmic guitar and luminous presence, made her an essential figure in the popularisation of bossa nova in Japan. Her album Dream (1999) sold over 200,000 copies in Japan. Four times winner of the Japan Gold Disc Award in the Jazz category, in 2013 she was distinguished by the Brazilian government with the National Order of Rio Branco, reaffirming her status as an international benchmark of the genre. Throughout her career she has shared the stage with icons such as Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Donato, bringing her music to audiences all over the world. In April 2026 she will present her album Sue Ann - Homage to Antonio Carlos Jobim, a delicate duo project with pianist Masaki Hayashi, conceived as a tribute to the founder of bossa nova in the year before the centenary of his birth. The album brings together a selection of Jobim's masterpieces revisited from the intimacy of the duo format, where improvisation and musical dialogue reveal new lights in a timeless repertoire. Masaki Hayashi, pianist and composer, who develops his own projects and collaborates with artists such as Lisa Ono herself and other musicians like Ringo Sheena, LEO, Aska Maret, Seigen Tokuzawa and Kazuma Fujimoto. On the album Sue Ann - Homage to Antonio Carlos Jobim (2026), Hayashi takes on not only the piano, but also the arrangements and production, building together with Lisa Ono a sonic space of refined closeness. A meeting that celebrates the essence of bossa nova and projects it into the present with sensitivity, respect and an unmistakable vocation of shared beauty. In collaboration with