Hiroyuki Noritake (則竹裕之) is a drummer who spent fifteen years in T-Square, the band that, with Casiopea, did most to define Japanese jazz-fusion's commercial peak. He was born on 27 August 1964 in Kawanishi, in Hyogo Prefecture on the edge of the Osaka area. His father was a jazz drummer, and Noritake took up the instrument under his influence. As a high school senior he went to a band seminar led by Casiopea at Lake Kawaguchi, and he has stayed a Casiopea devotee since: Japanese Wikipedia says he can play its signature pieces from memory.

He studied at Kobe University and played in an amateur band called Party Joke. In 1985, while still a student, he was scouted for The Square, as T-Square was then known, and turned professional with them. He took the drum chair from Toru Hasebe, and his first credited studio album is S.P.O.R.T.S. (CBS/Sony, 5 March 1986). Both drummers are credited on F-1 Grand Prix (1989). On Truth (CBS/Sony, 1 April 1987), made when Noritake was 22, he is credited on drums and drum programming. Its title track became the theme of Fuji TV's Formula One broadcasts in Japan and is the song his name is attached to.

Through the rest of the band's classic period he sat in the rhythm section with the bassist Mitsuru Sutoh, behind the guitarist Masahiro Andoh, the keyboardist Hirotaka Izumi and the saxophonist Takeshi Itoh. Discogs credits him on every T-Square studio album from S.P.O.R.T.S. to the self-titled T-Square of April 2000, among them Yes, No. (1988), Wave (1989, the first album released under the T-Square name), Natural (1990), New-S (1991), Impressive (1992), Human (1993), Miss You in New York (1995), B.C. A.D. (1996), Blue in Red (1997) and Gravity (1998). His official site says he won the Japan Gold Disc Award in the jazz category ten times in that period. He also learned to write inside the band. On the T-Square And Friends album Solitude (1994) he composed, produced and arranged "Heaven Knows" and its reprise, and he wrote "No More Tears" for Natsu no Wakusei the same year. English Wikipedia also names "Yuh-Ja" among his compositions.

In 1999 he made a record of his own. Dreams Can Go, co-produced by the pianist Hatsuho Furukawa and the keyboardist Akira Ishiguro, has ten tracks, from "Time To Landing" to a closing "Time To Landing (To The Next Voyage)," with Masayoshi Furukawa on guitar, Vagabond Suzuki among five bassists, and Noritake on drums, percussion and programming. Japanese catalogue listings date it to 22 September 1999, and the Village Records edition is dated 12 October 2000. It remains the only album issued under his own name.

In 2000 the band's lineup format was dissolved, and Noritake left with Sutoh. What followed was a long run as one of the first-call fusion drummers in Tokyo. In 2004 he formed Synchronized DNA, a twin-drum unit, with Akira Jimbo, Casiopea's longtime drummer, and in December 2005 the two were on opposite channels of the album Signal, which Casiopea made with Synchronized DNA: Jimbo on the left, Noritake on the right, with Minoru Mukaiya on keyboards. A DVD, Double Drum Performance, came out the same year, and the pair toured Canada, including the Montreal Drum Festival. On 17 December 2005 he was in Bangkok, playing with the saxophonist Masato Honda, a former T-Square colleague, at the Bangkok Jazz Festival. He went on to play on Honda's Real-Fusion (2000), What Is Fusion (2001), Assemble a Crew (2004) and Saxes Street (2015), and the all-ex-T-Square band Masato Honda with Voice of Elements in 2006.

His other long-running groups include Kumi Adachi Club Pangaea, a guitar-led band founded in 2005 whose Little Wing (2007) is built on Jimi Hendrix material, and Dimension, the fusion band led by the guitarist Takashi Masuzaki, on whose numbered albums he appears as a guest drummer: Discogs lists him on every one from 21st Dimension (2008) to 35 (2026), alongside its saxophonist Kazuki Katsuta. He appears as a featured drummer on the Battle Jazz Big Band's 3rd (2008), conducted by Osamu Yoshida, and on Kazumi Watanabe's Jazz Impression (2009). Japanese Wikipedia lists him as a regular member of Sadao Watanabe's quintet and of Kazumi Watanabe's Jazz Return Project; the record credits found for the second are the 2009 album above.

He kept turning up on other artists' records. Masayoshi Takanaka used him on Surf & Turf (2004), Yuji Ohno on Made in Y.O. (2005) and Lupin the Third soundtrack work, Tetsuo Sakurai on My Dear Musiclife (2009), Isamu Ohashi on the 1993 Formula One album Images, the conductor Yutaka Sado on two Siena Wind Orchestra albums, and, in 2023, the pianist Riyoko Takagi on both The Piano Story and Midnight in Blue, the second of which won the jazz prize at the CD Shop Awards. He has also been part of the backing band of the singer Ayaka Hirahara since 2010 and plays on the Mario Kart 8 soundtrack beside fellow T-Square drummer Satoshi Bandoh.

In 2022, according to Japanese Wikipedia, he formed Akasaka Trio with Andoh and Sutoh, and the quintet 4GENEXYZ with the keyboardist Jun Tomoda, the trumpeter Sora Fujii and the saxophonist Takafumi Kawashima. Sutoh is the bassist there too, so the rhythm section of 1987 was still together in 2024, when 4GENEXYZ released Sky, River and Friends on the Earth on the jazz label airgroove, part of Elec Records. His official site announced a three-day run of 60th-birthday concerts, with streaming, in September 2024. He turned 62 in August 2026.

Alongside performing he is a lecturer in the jazz and pops department at Showa Academia Musicae, and he has given drum clinics in Montreal, Ottawa, Cologne, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Shanghai. He has also played Japan Foundation tours of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, India and Europe with the project Unit Asia.

Noritake is a fusion drummer in the T-Square mould: precise, bright and built for tight, melodic ensembles in which the drums keep a very steady pulse so that the guitar, keyboards and saxophone can carry the tunes. He is credited with drum programming as well as drums on Truth, Wave, Natsu no Wakusei, B.C. A.D., Blue in Red and Gravity, which fits the way T-Square mixed played and programmed rhythm through the late 1980s and 1990s.

The influences he points to are close to home: his father's jazz drumming, and Casiopea above all. His twin-drum partnership with Akira Jimbo, Casiopea's own drummer, grew out of that admiration.

His kit history is documented. He has played Pearl (until 1994), Sonor (1995 to 1998), Tama (1999 to 2001), Yamaha (2002 to 2014) and Sakae (2015 to 2024), and went back to Pearl in 2025. His cymbals moved from Sabian to Paiste and then to Zildjian.

Not all of his work is jazz. Alongside the fusion albums, Discogs lists him on pop sessions, among them Hiromi Go's GOrgeous (1994) and Ai Otsuka's Love Honey (2017), anime and television soundtracks, and game music, including Mario Kart 8, Super Mario Odyssey and the Animal Crossing soundtracks. His fusion identity is nevertheless the one that runs through his career: Discogs files his own album, 4GENEXYZ and his T-Square catalogue under Fusion, and his institutional ties are to jazz, from the Gold Disc jazz category to the jazz and pops department at Showa Academia Musicae.