Sharon Minemoto
Biography Sharon Minemoto
Sharon Minemoto
From age 16, Sharon Minemoto has performed for audiences worldwide. She leads a trio, quartet, and quintet, each with recordings available online and on CD, including CBC Radio broadcasts. Her quartet toured Canada in 2018 promoting Safe Travels and released its second album, Dark Night, Bright Stars, in August 2023.
Sharon has shared the stage with Canada’s leading jazz artists: Cory Weeds, Brad Turner, Jill Townsend, Oliver Gannon, Neil Swainson, Dee Daniels, Denzal Sinclaire, James Danderfer, Laura Crema, Mike Allen, the Vancouver Jazz Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and Musica Intima, as well as international guests Seamus Blake and Jeremy Pelt.
Awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, and Japanese Canadian Legacies Society (JCLS), she studied in New York City for four months with Renee Rosnes and Kenny Werner. Supported by JCLS, she composed nine works for her quartet inspired by her family’s WWII internment experience. Recorded at Monarch Studios in October 2025, they will be released on Cellar Music in 2026.
In 2015, Sharon teamed up with vocalist Melissa van der Schyff for two very successful concerts, one at the legendary jazz club, Birdland in NYC and the other at The Abbey Theatre in Orlando, Florida. In 2019, CBC Radio in Vancouver selected one of Sharon’s compositions as the theme song for their weekly jazz program, Hot Air. In addition to performing and composing, Sharon led the house band for the weekly Pat’s Pub jazz jam session for over ten years.
A seasoned educator, Sharon has been on faculty in the music department at Vancouver Community College since 2000 and sits on the Board of Directors for the Fraser MacPherson Jazz Fund. As curator, she has programmed the popular weekly jazz series every Wednesday evening and Saturday afternoon at La Fabrique St. George Winery since 2022. In her first three years as curator, La Fabrique sold out all 17 shows during the Vancouver International Jazz Festival.
