Film still Tokyo Jazz Club teaser 2026. Courtesy of Tokyo Jazz Club
On July 31, 2026, Tokyo Jazz Club announced its inaugural edition, taking place from November 1 to 8, 2026, in partnership with Art Week Tokyo (AWT), the annual citywide contemporary art initiative held across Tokyo’s museums and galleries. Emerging from the legacy of Basel Social Club, the independent platform founded in Basel, Switzerland, in 2022, the project will unfold across the eight floors of a former Jimbōchō capsule hotel near the city’s historic book district.
Basel Social Club is a non-profit association founded by a collective of art professionals with the goal of creating social spaces for art. Each year during the fair week in June, it transforms an unconventional space—an abandoned villa, historic factory, rural farmland, decommissioned bank, or vacant office building—into a hub for artistic exchange, in a format that, according to the organizers, operates without exclusivity, fixed models, or commercial mandates.
Tokyo Jazz Club carries forward the same interests in temporary communal spaces and the social possibilities of exhibition-making, while establishing a distinct identity for the city of Tokyo, together with its local partners. The project draws inspiration from the history of jazz culture in Japan and from the intimate spaces of listening, experimentation, collective authorship, and social gathering that have shaped the city’s cultural landscape for decades. For the founders, jazz functions less as a subject than as a structural principle: a way of embracing improvisation, organizing complexity, allowing abstraction to take form, and understanding sound as a generative force in artistic creation. Across the eight floors, exhibition spaces will be interwoven with performances, artist interventions, gastronomy, and bars, in what the organizers describe as a hybrid space between an immersive exhibition, a social environment, and a reimagined marketplace. Tokyo Jazz Club is co-founded by Robbie Okuda Fitzpatrick and Yael Salomonowitz, both among the co-founders of Basel Social Club.
From left: Robbie Fitzpatrick, Yael Salomonowitz. Photos by Alassan Diawara
Upon the announcement, Fitzpatrick commented, “Tokyo is the natural choice for the continued evolution of the ideas we have developed through Basel Social Club. The city holds an extraordinary tension between tradition and experimentation—from its deep musical history, formal rituals, and exquisite craftsmanship to its embrace of highly original and unconventional forms of expression. In recent years, Art Week Tokyo has helped turn the Japanese capital into a magnet for the global art community, with international artists and galleries eager to exhibit, connect, and participate in the city’s vibrant discourse. Tokyo Jazz Club builds on those exchanges while responding to the city’s remarkable cultural landscape.”
Salomonowitz said, “The performance program at Tokyo Jazz Club began with a simple premise: to create a score that privileges experience over spectacle. We’re interested in exploring the space between performance and spectatorship. Throughout the building, artists activate spaces through music, movement, sound and ritual, creating moments of encounter that unfold between performers and audiences. Rather than separating exhibition and performance, we want to create an environment where both exist as part of the same shared world. Jazz offers us a mode of thinking—a language of improvisation, listening and collective presence.”
Participating artists, galleries, partners, and the full performance program will be announced soon. Art Week Tokyo, the project’s partner, will be held over five days from November 4 to 8, 2026, with fifty-five participating museums and galleries.
Tokyo Jazz Club
Dates: November 1–8, 2026
Venue: Former Jimbōchō capsule hotel, Tokyo (details to be announced)
Co-founders: Robbie Okuda Fitzpatrick, Yael Salomonowitz
In partnership with Art Week Tokyo
Supported by Arts Council Tokyo
https://tokyojazzclub.jp/
Art Week Tokyo 2026
Dates: November 4–8, 2026
Organizer: Japan Contemporary Art Platform, in collaboration with Art Basel
https://www.artweektokyo.com/en/