Tomoko Funaki

2015 is bassist Tomoko Funaki’s fifth year as an SJW faculty member. Since relocating to San Francisco in 2002, she has immersed herself into the San Francisco jazz scene, studying and performing with luminaries including Ray Drummond, Rodney Whitaker, Andrew Speight, Vince Lateano, Mark Levine, Donald “Duck” Bailey, Denise Perrier, and Rufus Reid.

Tomoko was born in Japan into a musical family. Like her mother, a violinist for a symphony orchestra in Japan, Tomoko began as a classical musician studying violin with the Suzuki Method at the age of 4. By age 16, her musical interests broadened and she picked up the flute, her father’s instrument. Tomoko moved to the United States to attend college and lived in New York and then San Francisco, where she continued to perform and expose herself to a broad range of musical genres. It was during this time that she first discovered her passion for jazz and the upright bass.