Yu Kuga (陸悠, くが ゆう) is a saxophonist, composer and arranger from Kobe. He is best known on the stage as one of the three tenor saxophonists of Tenors In Chaos, and in the studio as a doubler in big bands, where he plays baritone, soprano and alto saxophone, clarinet and flute as well as tenor. His date of birth is not published. His biography on the Makoto Ozone No Name Horses website gives his birthplace as Kobe, in Hyogo Prefecture. The family name 陸 is read Kuga here, as the label and his own pages spell it, although some English-language promotional material romanises the same two characters as Yu Riku.

He began in Kobe, studying saxophone with Mitsuhiro Furuya (古谷光広) and piano with Hiroyuki Miyashita (宮下博行). The mouthpiece maker Syos, which lists him among its artists, says he was featured at the Japan Student Jazz Festival and the Kobe Next Jazz Competition, and that he started his career leading a group called The Five Colors, writing and playing his own music in Kobe and Osaka. Syos gives the title of his debut album as Declaration of Independence and its year as 2016. That album is known only from this one biography, which names no label, personnel or tracks. In a 2023 interview with the music site Spincoaster, Kuga described his route into the music: smooth jazz first, with Kenny G and Eric Marienthal, then Michael Brecker, then from his university years the contemporary line of Ben Wendel and Mark Turner. As a student he went to hear Takuya Kuroda's band at a club called Left Alone in Ashiya, and heard Akihiro Nishiguchi's quintet at a jazz event on Port Island in Kobe. He finished university in Japan before going abroad; no source found names the university.

In 2016 he entered Berklee College of Music in Boston on a scholarship and majored in jazz composition. His biography lists his composition teachers as Ayn Inserto, Greg Hopkins, Bob Pilkington, Scott Free, Jackson Shultz and Robert Rodriguez, and says he studied saxophone with Rick DiMuzio, working on improvisation and thematic development. He received the Duke Ellington Award while a student, according to the same biography and to Syos. Berklee's events calendar lists "Yu Kuga's Jazz Composition Portfolio," a recital of original compositions at Berk Recital Hall on Friday, 17 August 2018, at 4 p.m. He graduated that month at the top of his class, and began working from Japan.

Back in Japan, he played a duo concert with the pianist Makiko Sasai at 100BAN Hall in Kobe's former foreign settlement on 30 April 2019. On 18 December 2019 he was credited as a featured artist on "I Want You," a track on the album Golden Bridge by T-Groove and Monolog, released by the label monophonic. His biography lists collaborations with Takuya Kuroda, the pianist Takeshi Obayashi, Louis Cole, Yuki Monolog Kanesaka and the singer MISIA, and says he took part in a MISIA Soul Jazz Big Band Orchestra arena tour, in Kuroda's aTak Band, in Junko Onishi's big band, and in the Louis Cole Big Band's Japan tour and a Korean performance. Kuroda said in the Spincoaster interview that Kuga was one of the few horn players to have stayed on in MISIA's band, and described him as better known for large ensembles and arranging than for leading small groups.

The documented big-band work starts in 2021. On 23 and 24 March 2021 Onishi recorded Out of the Dawn with her new orchestra, and Kuga is credited on baritone saxophone and clarinet; the album came out on 23 June 2021. The aTak band, a fifteen-piece group Kuroda formed, inspired by the Akoya Afrobeat Ensemble he plays with in Brooklyn, recorded its first album ZASU at a retreat studio in Izu in March 2021, with the mix done in New York, and released three tracks as digital singles in July, August and September 2021. Kuga is named in its credits, and in the aTak group Kuroda describes in the interview he and Tomoaki Baba play baritone saxophone and Nishiguchi plays tenor. The CD of ZASU followed on 10 April 2024. On 16 May 2022 he played baritone saxophone in bassist Kunpei Nakabayashi's orchestra at Cotton Club in Tokyo, a concert released as Live at "Cotton Club" on 14 September 2023, on which Kuroda and Miki Hirose are also credited on trumpet.

A 2023 CD put his own writing in front of a student big band. From Where The Sun Rises (Light Music Society, LMS-001), an album by the Keio University student big band Light Music Society, was released on CD on 22 February 2023 with six featured guests, one per track: the drummer Shun Ishiwaka, Hiroyuki Ishikawa, Kuga, Baba, Ryo Kusunose and Taka Nawashiro. Tower Records Japan's listing identifies him as the tenor saxophonist 陸悠 (Yu Kuga) and credits "Good Thing Will Happen" to him as composer and arranger.

Tenors In Chaos began in Kobe. Kuroda held a jazz event called The BUNDLE at 100BAN Hall in December 2021, and a project band of three tenor saxophonists, Nishiguchi, Baba and Kuga, played it with Kansai musicians; 100BAN Hall's own video of the set is dated 25 December 2021. Kuroda, who named the group and produced it, said that a promoter in Kobe wanted to put on a three-tenor band more than anything else, and that this pushed the idea forward. The band's debut album, Chaos, was recorded in May 2023 at Victor Studio in Shibuya with David Bryant on piano and Rhodes, Takashi Sugawa on bass and Kazuhiro Odagiri on drums, and Kuroda sitting in on trumpet on one track. It was released digitally on 1 November 2023 with eight tracks, followed by a release concert on 30 November 2023, the group's first at Cotton Club in Tokyo, and a ten-track CD on 10 April 2024 (aTak Record AR002). Kuga composed two of its pieces, "Midway" and "Ringtone," and arranged the standard "My Ideal." The group's second album, More Chaos, was released digitally in July 2025, with a ten-track CD on 15 October 2025 (aTak Records AR-004); it includes his composition "Preference" and his arrangement of "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most." Its label describes Tenors In Chaos shows at Blue Note Tokyo in 2024 and 2025 as selling out quickly, and says the group was chosen to support the KNOWER Japan tour in 2024. A Japan Foundation tour of Australia, Japan Jazz Nights, lists the group for Melbourne on 22 October 2026, Brisbane on 23 October and Perth on 25 October.

In 2024 he joined Makoto Ozone's big band No Name Horses. The band announced on 4 May 2024, with its twentieth anniversary ahead in 2025, that it was adding three members: the trumpeter Shutaro Matsui, Kuga on tenor saxophone, and the bassist Shimpei Ogawa. The announcement included a two-night Blue Note Tokyo run on 7 and 8 August 2024 to introduce the new line-up, and the band recorded Day 1 on 9, 10 and 11 August; the album was released by Verve on 20 November 2024. On it Kuga is credited on tenor saxophone and flute, and takes solos on "Deviation," alongside Toshio Miki, and on "Gotta Be Happy." The band's website lists a national tour in January 2025 and a second leg in December 2025.

Other credits show how widely he is called on. He is one of the saxophonists on Don't Worry Baby (Tokyo Records, 17 November 2023), the album of the rock band Rockon Social Club, with Nishiguchi, Hirose and the trombonist Shigetaka Ikemoto. He is the tenor saxophonist in the sax section of the Persona 5 Special Big Band Concert 2025, a recording of the game-music concert held at Shinjuku Bunka Center in December 2025 with Eric Miyashiro on trumpet and Luna Watanabe on alto saxophone, issued as a two-CD set in June 2026. MusicBrainz, drawing on VGMdb, also credits him on saxophone and flute on more than a dozen recordings of video-game and anime music. The Cotton Club's profile of Tenors In Chaos says he leads a twelve-piece group, the Yu Kuga Jazz Orchestra; no recording or concert listing for it has been found.

What is not known

His date and year of birth are not published, and no source found names his university in Japan. His 2016 album Declaration of Independence and The Five Colors appear only in the Syos biography. His own website, yukuga.com, was not reachable when checked, and no interview earlier than 2023 turned up. No Wikipedia article or Wikidata item for him was found. MusicBrainz does have an entry for 陸悠 (a male musician from Kobe, with his website and a Spotify artist page linked), and it lists his tenor, alto, baritone and soprano saxophone and flute credits on more than a dozen recordings catalogued from VGMdb, a database of video-game, anime and film music.

Kuga's profile is that of a composer-arranger who is also a hard-working section player. The Syos biography says his writing draws on the styles of Count Basie, Bob Brookmeyer and Maria Schneider, and the credit trail agrees: he is a baritone saxophone and clarinet player on big-band records (Onishi, Nakabayashi, aTak), a tenor saxophone soloist in Ozone's band, and the author of the arrangement of "My Ideal" on Chaos.

Spincoaster's interview gives the clearest picture of his playing. Kuroda described his sound as smoky yet able to cut through a band, and different from the sound of the typical jazz player. Baba compared his forward, straight-line delivery to Chris Potter, and Kuga himself placed Bob Mintzer among the players with that slim, direct sound. Baba also said that Kuga's "Midway" has long unison passages for the three tenors and an approach to harmony he admired. Nishiguchi singled out the "My Ideal" arrangement for the way it keeps the good parts of older big-band writing, and noted that all three tenors came up through big bands. Baba, who is a year older, said he and Kuga had listened to much of the same music as students. Kuga said that as a student he had watched Michael Brecker and Bob Mintzer and wanted to be a dedicated tenor player, and that the sound of a full-time tenor player is different from that of a doubler, a gap he felt keenly beside Nishiguchi and Baba. He plays a Selmer Mark VI that he dated to 1965, set up with a mouthpiece, reed and ligature chosen for an easy, light response. Syos lists him among its artists and has a video titled as his signature tenor saxophone mouthpiece.

Baba said in the interview that Tenors In Chaos has Kuga at its centre. He added that he had not realised how well Kuga plays tenor out front until they played together in Kobe, since the two sit together on baritone saxophone in aTak, and Nishiguchi said the band lets Kuga take the front-line role he wants.