Yerba Buena Gardens Festival Murasaki Ensemble

You can call the Murasaki Ensemble a world jazz combo, but that doesn’t capture the singularly inventive nature of this all-star quartet. Centering on the sinuous melodies of the Japanese koto played by Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto, the band melds an alluring array of rhythms generated by percussion legend Vince Delgado on Arabic tabla, Latin congas and bongos, and the Egyptian frame-drum riqq with basslines by Mark Heshima Williams and the blues-infused guitar grooves of Jeff Massanari. A master of the ancient 13-string koto, Muramoto founded the group as a vehicle to radically reimagine traditional Japanese melodies. Together, the Murasaki Ensemble delivers a transporting musical experience, producing a sound that is both enticingly familiar and utterly unexpected.