Takahiro Miyazaki (宮崎隆睦, Miyazaki Takahiro) is a Japanese saxophonist and EWI player, born on May 23, 1969, in the Suma ward of Kobe. He is best known as the saxophonist of T-Square from 1998 to 2000, the two years between Masato Honda and the return of Takeshi Itoh to the saxophone chair. His name appears on more records than it does on covers: Discogs files more than fifty credits under it, every one of them an appearance and none a release under his own name, and they run from fusion albums to J-pop, rock and video game soundtracks. His own releases are a pop-cover album (Nostalgia, 2006) and a set of another musician's compositions (Love Means... More Than Words Can Say, 2019). He is a fusion saxophonist who works largely as a session player rather than a jazz bandleader, and this profile describes him that way.

He began playing saxophone at 13, as a student at Konan Junior High School in Kobe, and by 16 he was working in jazz clubs near home. After graduating from the business faculty of Konan University he went to the United States in September 1992 and spent three years at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. His own biography says he performed with Natalie Cole and Nat Adderley while he was a student. Back in Japan he joined tours by the singers Yuji Oda and Toko Furuuchi, and he appeared in the video for Oda's "Love Somebody" (1997). Before T-Square he had also formed a band called Back Bay Gang, which he kept going after he left.

In 1998 he took Honda's place in the band. He had not played the EWI before: just before he joined, his management gave him two of the instruments and told him to be able to play at least "Truth" within two weeks, and when the two weeks were up the band recorded Gravity. That album (Village Records, May 21, 1998) was also the one on which the keyboardist Tadashi Namba replaced Hirotaka Izumi, and Japanese Wikipedia records that it won the 13th Japan Gold Disc Award for Jazz Album of the Year (Japanese). Its limited first edition carried a bonus disc with a studio recording of the band's concert staple "Japanese Soul Brothers," played by fifteen current and former members. Discogs credits Miyazaki on saxophone beside Honda and Itoh, with Izumi, Daisaku Kume and Namba on keyboards, Kiyohiko Senba on percussion, and Masahiro Andoh, Mitsuru Sutoh and Hiroyuki Noritake from the working band. (Discogs spells his name "Takashiro" on that one credit.)

Sweet & Gentle (Sony Records, May 21, 1999) is where he began writing for the band. He composed "Dali's Boogie" and the title track, and co-wrote "Scene-000" with Sutoh; Keiji Matsumoto was the keyboardist, still a support player at that point. Japanese Wikipedia quotes Andoh as saying the saxophonist had settled into the band by then. The self-titled T-Square (Sony, April 1, 2000) followed, with twelve tracks, Matsumoto now a full member, and two more Miyazaki compositions, "Ça et là" and "(Don't Ask About) Meaning of Kiss." On it he plays tenor, alto, soprano and baritone saxophones and the EWI, and vibraphone on one track. In 2000 the group moved from a five-piece band to a unit built around Andoh and Itoh, and Miyazaki left together with Sutoh, Noritake and Matsumoto. The stay was short enough that there are many T-Square songs he never played.

He has come back to the band's circle several times since. Discogs credits him on the 2002 album Vocal² and on T Comes Back (2003), where he arranged the horn and saxophone parts of "Omens of Love '03," and later on the T-Square Super Band album Smile (2013), the anniversary releases of 2018, the box set Crème De La Crème (2021) and Vento de Felicidade (2023), on which he is credited on clarinet.

His first release away from the band was a CD with the unit A.O.I., formed with Ado Takahashi (高橋亜土): Mouth to Hands (Chiken George Records, November 9, 2004). Nostalgia (Pony Canyon, January 18, 2006), released on the label's Leafage jazz line, was his first solo album after T-Square. It is a cover album, and it includes a new recording of "Sweet & Gentle." The retailer HMV describes it as an acoustic, AOR-leaning collection of Japanese and American pop songs, among them "Peg," "After the Love Has Gone" and the wartime standard "Soshu Yakyoku."

In 2010 he formed Teatro Raffinato with the bassist and arranger Hitoshi Shimono, a friend from Berklee. The duo plays with a string quartet, piano and drums and percussion in concert, and Sony Music's profile describes their music as borderless, joining classical and jazz in orchestral arrangements. Their album Page One came out in 2017, and a second album, equals beauty, carries the theme song of a short film that was nominated at the Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia in 2014. He started the horn group Tri Horn Buffalo in 2011 with the trumpeter Tadahiro Fusahara and the bassist Kenji Hino, formed the horn unit B-sty Horns in 2015, and in September 2023 began the trio T-Skitch with a percussionist and a guitarist.

His most recent album of his own came out of an American connection. Love Means... More Than Words Can Say is a set of compositions by Lee Oskar, the former harmonica player of War, performed by Miyazaki, produced by Oskar and recorded in the United States. His agency's profile dates its release to December 2019; Apple Music lists it with a May 2020 date. Oskar appears as a featured player on five of its twelve tracks, and a September 2023 review of Oskar's own album She Said Mahalo names Miyazaki among the guests on saxophone and flute.

Most of what Discogs lists is session work, and it splits into two groups. The first is fusion and contemporary jazz: Toshihiro Akamatsu's Focus Lights (2005), Itoh's Mellow Madness (2007), three albums by the drummer Satoshi Bandoh (2011 to 2016), Sutoh's Waking Up, Remember the Day, 2011, the Sadao Watanabe Orchestra's Encore! (2017), and the Latin jazz records of the guitarist Takashi Nakazato (2020 and 2023). The second is pop, rock and game music: KinKi Kids, Speed, Mika Nakashima, Ai Otsuka, Arashi, B'z (2006, 2022 and 2023), the Gran Turismo 5 soundtracks (2008 and 2010), the anime vocal group Walküre (2017), Yugo Kanno's soundtrack for Fugoukeiji Balance: Unlimited (2020) and Misato Watanabe (2024). The most recent entry is the vinyl album Blue Madness (Batlands Music Label, December 2025).

He is also a teacher and author. His EWI Master Book (Alsoh, 2010, revised in 2015) is a standard Japanese method for the instrument, and he has published an alto saxophone improvisation DVD method (2013) and a saxophone ad-lib workbook (Shinko Music, 2020), and translated Peter Weniger's funk etudes and Gilson Schachnik's ear-training books. He gives lessons and clinics through the Shimamura Music stores and plays Yanagisawa saxophones. At 57 he is still active.

Miyazaki is an alto player first. Japanese Wikipedia lists David Sanborn, Grover Washington Jr. and Sadao Watanabe as the saxophonists he copied most, and says he played in a T-Square copy band in high school. Zoom's profile of him describes a powerful, broad tone that sings. On the EWI he usually transposes to E-flat because of his long background on alto, whereas Itoh and Honda play it in C.

His recorded work sits in the space between fusion, smooth jazz and pop. The T-Square albums he played on are filed by Discogs under Jazz with the style Fusion, and the Gold Disc award for Gravity is a jazz-category award, but his own albums lean toward polished cover repertoire and film-like orchestral arrangement rather than improvised small-group jazz, and a large share of the credits under his name are J-pop and rock sessions or game soundtracks. Read him as a fusion player with strong jazz-club and Berklee roots and a working life in the studio, not as a straight-ahead jazz leader.