Credits:

Takahashi Aki

Description:

This is the second recording project of Erik Satie's piano works by Aki Takahashi, newly started in 2013. This album contains works by Satie from 1913 to 1919. The new recording was made at a richly resonant recording venue in Italy with the famous Fazioli piano, and features the best of Aki Takahashi's masterful performance of Satie's works. The booklet includes a reorganized commentary by Kuniharu Akiyama, a renowned Satie scholar. ＜Aki Takahashi (Piano) was born in Kamakura, Japan, and began piano lessons with her mother, Eiko Takahashi, at the age of five. After attending high school and university affiliated with Tokyo University of the Arts, she completed graduate studies at the same university. In 1973, she won the 1973 Art Festival Excellence Award, and in 1974, she won the "Takahashi: The World of Aki" (Toshiba) award, which includes 20 contemporary works from Japan and abroad. In 1975, together with Kuniharu Akiyama, he organized the "Erik Satie Concert Series" (12 concerts), which became a major opportunity for the "rediscovery of Satie.Since his first visit to the U.S. in 1980 at the invitation of Morton Feldman, he has been invited to perform in the U.S. and was a guest professor at the California Institute of the Arts in 1984. In 1983, he received the first Kenzo Nakajima Award, and in 1986, the first Kyoto Music Award for Practice. He has also released a number of CDs, including "Hyper Beatles" series, in which he has commissioned works based on Beatles' numbers from leading contemporary composers around the world. He planned, produced, and performed the "Hyper Beatles" series (Toshiba EMI), in which he commissioned world-class composers of contemporary music to create works based on Beatles' numbers, and completed four CDs. In the spring of 2006, he was invited as pianist-in-residence to the "Merzmusik" music festival in Berlin.In the same year, his recital of Feldman's works in New York was selected by the New York Times as one of the best concerts of 2006, and he received the 2007 Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award for his performance of the CDs "Schubert: Piano Sonatas" and "Morton Feldman: Trio". He has also performed on the CD "Dangerous Nights". His CD "Dangerous Night: Aki Takahashi Plays John Cage" won the Excellence Prize at the 2008 Japan Arts Festival. In 2011, he was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon, and in 2014, the 23rd Asahi Contemporary Music Award. He is the author of "Parlando: My Piano Life" (published by Shunju-sha, 2013). Camerata Tokyo