Hiromasa Suzuki, nicknamed "Colgen," was born in Tokyo on May 26, 1940, the son of a dentist. He studied economics at Keio University, but the school's student jazz-piano scene pulled him further than his coursework did. There he became one of the "Keio Three Crows," a nickname for three student pianists who'd go on to shape very different corners of Japanese music: Suzuki himself, Masahiko Sato, and Yuji Ohno, who later spent decades composing for the Lupin III franchise.

Suzuki turned professional before he'd finished school, joining drummer George Kawaguchi's "Big 4+1." From there he moved into trumpeter Terumasa Hino's combo, where his arranging talent showed early, most notably on 1969's "Hi-Nology." Discogs' own artist-identity records confirm his membership in the Terumasa Hino Quintet and in drummer Akira Ishikawa's Count Buffaloes during this period.

By the early 1970s he was leading his own sessions. "Rock Joint Biwa - Kumikyoku Furukotofumi" (1972, RCA) built a full jazz-rock concept album around the biwa, a traditional Japanese lute, and the ancient mythology of the Kojiki. A companion record, "Rock Joint Cither - Silk Road," followed in 1973. By 1976 he'd sharpened into a tighter, funkier sound with two records the same year: the acoustic piano-trio album "Colgen World," and "High-Flying," an electric fusion set produced by saxophonist Jiro Inagaki and featuring a young Shuichi "Ponta" Murakami on drums, Akira Okazawa and Kenji Takamizu on bass, and guitarists Fujimaru Yoshino, Kiyoshi Sugimoto, and Masayoshi Takanaka. "High-Flying" was reissued decades later by the American label Light in the Attic, whose own liner copy describes Suzuki as "the hidden force behind Hiroshi Suzuki's 'Romance' and Jiro Inagaki's 'Breeze.'" That's not a stretch: Suzuki is credited on keyboards on "Romance" itself, a track on trombonist Hiroshi Suzuki's "Cat" (recorded October 1975, released February 1976), a different musician entirely who happens to share his surname.

"Pianic Pianism," a solo piano record, and "Skip Step Colgen," a jazz-funk set built around a cover of "Watermelon Man," both followed in 1977. From 1978 he moved into film, television, and anime scoring, composing and arranging the music for "Umi no Toriton" (Triton of the Sea), a fantasy anime series with almost nothing in common with a biwa concept record beyond the same name in the credits. His arranging work continued into the 1980s and 90s for pop and novelty acts, including television personality Tamori and the group SMAP, and he later returned to solo piano on "With My Whole Heart," produced by his old Keio bandmate Masahiko Sato.

Suzuki was diagnosed with cancer late in life. He played a comeback live show after treatment before passing away on May 21, 2001, five days short of his 61st birthday. His catalog has continued to circulate since: "High-Flying" and "Rock Joint Biwa" are now fixtures of the Japanese jazz-fusion reissue scene, and his session work keeps surfacing on compilations tracing that era, including 2023's "Touch: The Sublime Sound of Yuji Ohno," honoring the same college bandmate who went on to score Lupin III.

Suzuki's own catalog moves across a wide stylistic range inside a single decade: concept-driven jazz-rock built around traditional Japanese instrumentation (Rock Joint Biwa, Rock Joint Cither), a straight acoustic piano trio (Colgen World), electric fusion and jazz-funk (High-Flying, Skip Step Colgen), and unaccompanied solo piano (Pianic Pianism, With My Whole Heart). As a session player and arranger, he worked at the center of Tokyo's late-1960s and 1970s jazz-rock and fusion scene, contributing keyboards and arrangements to other bandleaders' landmark records, including Hiroshi Suzuki's "Cat" and Jiro Inagaki's "Breeze," while also crossing into television, film, and anime scoring, a versatility reflected in how his own name appears across genres as different as a Kojiki-themed concept album and a children's fantasy anime soundtrack.