PORT HUENEME : Japanese Jazz Band to Play Benefit Show

The oldest jazz band in Japan will offer its first Ventura County performance at a free concert to benefit the homeless on Thursday.

The 17-piece ensemble, called Nobou Hara and the Sharps and Flats Jazz Band, which performs big-band music and other types of jazz, will play from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Needham Theater at the Port Hueneme Naval Construction Battalion Center.

Free tickets for the performance are available at the Oxnard Civic Auditorium box office, 800 Hobson Way. Donations will be accepted at the concert for the Ventura County Rescue Mission, a shelter for the homeless in Oxnard.

About 200 tickets were still available Monday, said Jim Faulconer, community services director for the city of Oxnard, which is sponsoring the concert. The theater seats 700, he said.

The band was formed in 1951 by leader Nobou Hara, a saxophone player who still performs with the group. The band plays music from the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s and has performed with Diana Ross, Nat King Cole and Andy Williams, among others.

Before the Port Hueneme concert, Sharps and Flats will perform tonight and Wednesday in Los Angeles. The idea for the tour, which marks the band’s first visit to Southern California, came from a volunteer worker for Oxnard Mayor Nao Takasugi.

The volunteer, who was traveling in Japan, suggested to the owner of a Tokyo club that one of the country’s jazz bands come to Oxnard, said Mariko Goto Olivares of Kyodo News Service in Los Angeles.

The club owner began working with a group of Japanese-American citizens in Los Angeles, including Olivares, to arrange concerts in support of victims of the spring riots that followed the verdicts in the Rodney G. King police beating trial.

People attending the Port Hueneme concert should enter the naval base through the Sunkist gate entrance on Ventura Road.

For more information, call 385-7434.