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My name is Malwina Witkowska and I am the founder of No Earplugs, booking agency based in Oslo, Norway. I am representing artists from Norway, Japan and the US within jazz, free and adventurous music. Together with Otomo Yoshihide we started working in late 2019.

Otomo is already a legend on the avant-garde & noise international scene. He is known for leading extraordinary projects such as Ground Zero or New Jazz Quintet or Special Big Band – the culmination of Otomo’s work as of now. Since the very beginning of our collaboration, we have committed to fulfilling our dream and organizing the tour for Special Big Band in Europe. It took years of preparations, searching for funding and booking the tour, but in the end we managed to make our dream come true. Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band visited Europe for the very first time and played a total of 12 concerts across Europe in 7 different countries: Lithuania, Poland, UK, Slovakia, Italy, Belgium and Germany in October 2024.

The tour kicked off at Vilnius Jazz Festival on 17th October 2024. Special Big Band played their first concert at a beautiful Old Lithuanian Theater with the capacity of 500 people. It was completely sold out and the reaction from the audience was beyond our expectations! Thierry Quenum sums up the performance for an online review at Couleurs Jazz: The huge Japanese “Special Big Band” that closes the evening is utterly enthralling, drawing its inspiration from rock, pop, classical music and free jazz. It’s an amazing mix in which mass effects dominate over solos. Beautiful sonic textures and dynamics, a highly original sound.
The tour continued the next day in Katowice, Poland where Big Band played at enormous concert hall of capacity 1200 people. Around 900 people came for their concert, which both musicians and organizers treated as a great success of the event. After the concert people were waiting and lining up to meet the musicians, take a photo and get a copy of CD signed.

Another highlight of the tour were two nights in Warsaw at the legendary club Pardon to Tu – both concerts were sold out and brought over 300 people in the audience each day. On the first night, Special Big Band presented their usual repertoire, mostly from the album Stone Stone Stone. The second night was completely dedicated to bon dance music and soundtrack music from “Amachan” TV series. Otomo was a little bit nervous, because it was a very first time that European audience would hear this kind of music live. But his doubts were shortly resolved – the audience was completely crazy for the music and enjoyed the concert until the very end!

In London, the band did a 3-day residency at Cafe Oto. All nights were sold out and brought biggest fans from all over UK and abroad to see those concerts. On the second day, Otomo conducted a workshop with around 30 young musicians about improvisation and conduction of a bigger ensemble. “The residency was seemingly sold-out and Monday evening had a small troop of fans and passersby crowded outside to listen via OTO’s big windows, who were well-rewarded by the bombastic volume of Yoshihide’s ensemble” writes Gail Tasker for Jazzwise magazine.

The three-day residency was truly out of this world, the feedback and reactions from the audiences only confirm that it was unforgettable event! “It was the most joyous and the best 3 days in the history of Cafe Oto!” – said the programmer at Cafe Oto, Fielding Hope.

Special Big Band ended the tour at the legendary Jazzfest Berlin. On Sunday morning the whole band participated in the community project called Lab Moabit. They performed outside at the playground for many people from the neighborhood, young children, their parents, festival participants or local people from the neighborhood. They played a joyful music and everybody started dancing and joining the band in a cheerful celebration of life and music! Later in the evening it was finally the time for the final concert of the festival and also final concert of the first European tour of Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band. “If the Festival started with a quiet invocation, it ended with a prolonged bang in the form of Otomo Yoshihide’s Special Big Band. […] An outstanding end to an outstanding festival” writes John Sharpe for All About Jazz.

The tour went incredibly well and the outcome was beyond our dreams! Most of the concerts were sold out and the range of audience varied from around 200 people up to 900 people. Many people told me it was the best concert in their lives and that they have never experienced such a good live performance. It will stay in their and our hearts forever! It has been such an honor to work with Special Big Band. I know it has been a dream come true tour for both me, Otomo, but also all the members of the band, and of course – for all the fans and people from the audience who shared this dream together with us. The project has a lot of potential to tour more in Europe in the near future. The feedback from audiences and organizers was truly amazing, which makes us sure that it is possible to organize more tours. We hope that it won’t be the last one and that we can bring the project again to Europe or other places in the world.