A Former Tokyo Capsule Hotel Turns Into a Jazz Club for Art Week
For one week in November, a former capsule hotel in Jimbocho, a neighbourhood in central Tokyo, is becoming a jazz club. Tokyo Jazz Club runs from 1 to 8 November, according to The Art Newspaper, and it mixes contemporary art, performance, music and food under one roof.
The project is new. It comes from Robbie Fitzpatrick and Yael Salomonowitz, the founders of Basel Social Club, a nomadic platform started in Basel, Switzerland, in 2022. Nomadic means it moves from place to place rather than staying in one building.
Tokyo Jazz Club is set up as a hybrid. The Art Newspaper describes it as lying somewhere between an immersive exhibition, a social room and a marketplace, where visitors can look, linger and buy. The idea draws on the history of jazz culture in Japan. Art Week Tokyo, the city's annual art festival, describes jazz here as a way of working: improvising, listening together, and treating sound as something that can create new things. The debut edition fills eight floors of the old hotel.
Visitors who want to go on a weekday evening can do so on Wednesday 4 to Friday 6 November, from 5pm to 11pm. A Sunday session on 8 November runs from 2pm to 6pm and charges admission. Art Week Tokyo recommends booking a place in advance. The venue address is 3-11-15 Kanda-Nishikicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo.
Tokyo Jazz Club is one of many events in the city's art calendar. Art Week Tokyo 2026 runs from 4 to 8 November, and this is its fifth edition. Galerie magazine counts 56 venues in the programme, so the jazz club is one stop among many.
Other events overlap with it. Serakai Studio is staging a long-running performance and installation by the Taiwanese artist Liang-Jung Chen on 4 and 5 November, as part of Certainly Tokyo at Path Omotesando. On 4 November, AWT x Shibuya Parco Art Night brings a line-up of DJs and performers, chosen by the media art and VJ duo MES. VJ means a visual artist who creates live images to go with music.
Gabriel Orozco's show Project O+O opens later in the month at Higashi-Yama Tokyo, running from 6 to 29 November. For it, the Mexican artist is working with the designer Shinichiro Ogata to turn a restaurant into an extension of his own home. The show is co-presented by the Mexico City gallery Kurimanzutto and the Tokyo-based producer Jam Acuzar.
If you are in Tokyo this month, the simplest plan is to pick one evening, book ahead for the Sunday session if you want it, and walk between the venues. Many of them sit within a short train ride of each other.
