Kazumi Watanabe was born on October 14, 1953 in Tokyo, Japan. He is a jazz fusion and instrumental rock guitarist and composer. He has been chosen Best Jazzman 24 times in a row by Swing Journal's annual poll. In 1979, he joined a group of innovative musicians such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Akiko Yano, Yukihiro Takahashi, Yasuaki Shimizu, Toshiyuki Honda and Shuichi 'Ponta' Murakami to form the legendary all-star band KYLYN, making an impact on the Japanese music scene. In autumn of the same year, he participated in the world tour of Yellow Magic Orchestra. Its huge success brought the name KAZUMI an international recognition.
Throughout the 1980s, he worked with a stellar cast of established musicians, including Tony Levin, Bill Bruford, Sly and Robbie, Wayne Shorter, Patrick Moraz, Marcus Miller, Richard Bona and Peter Erskine.
Watanabe has remained prolific and active throughout the 1990s and 2000s and remains one of Japan's best-selling jazz artists. His output is considered some of the better instrumental jazz fusion to emerge from Japan, informed with a particular bite and variety in approaches.
He is known for heavy endorsement and use of guitars by Steinberger and Paul Reed Smith.

Although Boccherini's musical legacy of some 350 works is quite substantial, his diligence and wealth of ideas must have produced many more compositions. A large number of these works fell victim to a fire in 1936 in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, leaving some 20 symphonies, 8 cello concertos, 91 string quartets, 154 quintets, 60 trios, religious works, and his own arrangements of works for guitar preserved for posterity - plus the one and only opera composed by Boccherini: 'La Clementina'.