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- Curation by: The Matrix
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Yoko Miwa
- City: Boston, MA
- Country: United States
- Hometown: Kobe, Japan
My Life
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Bio:
Internationally acclaimed pianist/composer Yoko Miwa is one of the most powerful and compelling performers on the scene today. Her trio, with its remarkable telepathy and infectious energy, has brought audiences to their feet worldwide. Their latest CD, 2019’s Keep Talkin’, showcases Miwa’s fine playing and artful compositions and the trio’s uncanny musical camaraderie. DownBeat gave the recording four stars, calling it “a beautifully constructed album” and noting “the drive and lyricism of a pianist and composer at home in bebop, gospel, pop, and classical.” JazzTimes also reviewed the album favorably, praising Miwa’s “jaw-dropping degree of technique.” The album enjoyed seven weeks in the top 10 on Jazz Week’s charts, much like its predecessor, Miwa’s 2017 release Pathways, which also made Jazz Week’s top 10 for several weeks. In a 2017 feature article on Miwa, DownBeat noted her “impressive technique and a tuneful lyricism that combines an Oscar Peterson-ish hard swing with Bill Evans-like introspection.”
For the past decade Miwa’s trio has played regularly at major jazz clubs in their home city of Boston, as well as venues around the world. A favorite of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Miwa was chosen to play on “Marian McPartland & Friends,” part of the Coca-Cola Generations in Jazz Festival. She was also chosen to perform at Lincoln Center’s annual Jazz and Leadership Workshop for The National Urban League’s Youth Summit. Miwa also appears regularly at New York’s famed Blue Note Jazz Club and has performed and/or recorded with a wide range of jazz greats including Sheila Jordan, Slide Hampton, Arturo Sandoval, George Garzone, Jon Faddis, Jerry Bergonzi, Esperanza Spalding, Terri Lyne Carrington, Kevin Mahogany, John Lockwood and Johnathan Blake among others. In 2018 she performed on the main stage at the Atlanta Jazz Festival and the Litchfield Jazz Festival, where her trio drew the largest audience of any act. She is a Yamaha Pianos Artist, JVC Victor Entertainment recording artist, 2019 Boston Music Awards Jazz Artist of the Year, and Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll winner.
Miwa’s story of becoming a jazz musician is full of serendipity and happy twists of fate. In the late 1990s the classically-trained artist auditioned for Berklee College of Music on a lark and ended up winning a full scholarship. She arrived at the school from her homeland of Japan in 1997, intending to stay for a year. In 2019, she’s still in Boston, enriching the city’s musical life and serving as one of the most popular professors in the Berklee piano department.
Act Naturally, the Yoko Miwa Trio’s major label debut in Japan, came out in 2012 on the JVC Victor Entertainment label and the band toured Japan that same year. “She is one of the best jazz pianists in Japan,” said Yozo Iwanami, Jazz Hihyo Magazine.
A native of Kobe, Japan, Miwa didn’t pursue an interest in jazz until she met and studied with Minoru Ozone, a popular television organist and nightclub owner who is the father of pianist Makoto Ozone. Miwa worked at Ozone’s club and as an accompanist and piano instructor at his music school until the great Kobe earthquake of 1995 destroyed both facilities. Then, while continuing to take private lessons from Minoru Ozone, she also pursued musical studies at the Koyo Conservatory in Kobe. From there she won first prize in a scholarship competition to attend Berklee. Miwa quickly began playing with a host of talented students and teachers, and she formed a strong bond with vocal great Kevin Mahogany, who chose the pianist to serve as accompanist in his classes and on his gigs.
Miwa has released eight highly acclaimed CDs: In the Mist of Time (Tokuma, 2000); Fadeless Flower (Polystar, 2002); Canopy of Stars (Polystar, 2004); The Day We Said Goodbye, recorded live at the studios of WGBH-FM (Sunshine Digital, 2006); Live at Scullers (Jazz Cat Amnesty, 2011); Act Naturally (JVC Victor Entertainment, 2012), Pathways (2017), and Keep Talkin’ (2019).
My Media
- Website: http://www.yokomiwa.com
- Twitter: yokomiwa
- Instagram: yokomiwajazz
- Buy My Music (downloads/CDs/DVDs): http://store.cdbaby.com/artist/yokomiwa
- YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/YokoMiwaTrio/
Click to Listen on Spotify
- (album/podcast 1): http://open.spotify.com/album/3DT4nt7TYDgRpLRd64vecp
- (album/podcast 2): http://open.spotify.com/album/3dhDW1DZZmAXRk5BWllpKY
- (album/podcast 3): http://open.spotify.com/album/1e5gDjsQZ7W7gGOTHRpBCr
- (album/podcast 4): http://open.spotify.com/album/3hkxfLPObNdkZrcwqMClHt
- (album/podcast 5): http://open.spotify.com/album/2K3WFSN0pIC5sOaUSU4Phe
- (album/podcast 6): http://https://open.spotify.com/album/43SwifYCgp2FcsVOIH68Gg
Contact Information
- Email: miwayoko@gmail.com
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“Pianist Yoko Miwa displays unpretentious melodies, elegant phrasing, and the lyrical sensibility of a jazz poet.” –Jazziz Magazine
“She has the enviable ability to play in any context with authenticity, clarity, and spontaneity…”
-Wilbert Sostre, JazzTimes
“Simply a first class, straight up, straight ahead player whose sole mission is to step up and deliver the goods.” –Midwest Record Review
“I greatly appreciate and respect the clarity and strength in Yoko’s playing, it is very apparent – the honesty, care and depth of foundation she touches the piano with.”
–Benny Green
►The matrix puts artists in discoverable reach of each other and the world via the m.o. of artists creating pathways to other artists.
► Human society is a small-world network, hence "six degrees of separation".
►The matrix is a small-world network too.
► In a small-world network...most nodes can be reached from every other node by a small number of hops or steps. (Wikipedia)
► In the matrix, hops/steps are recommendations, and nodes are artists. In the matrix, most artists are transitable steps away from most others . QED
► The matrix has its origins as an extension of a record shop opened to divulge the little known music of the people of the Recôncavo and sertão (subject of this interview with David Dye for broadcast on U.S. National Public Radio), per below. If everybody can now be found, they can too.
► According to Raimundo Sodré, in the sense of struggling under those with hands on the levers of society's power. The dictatorship of '64 to '85 got him. His protest song "A Massa" blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south before his career was destroyed, he was threatened with death, and forced into exile.
Music from the Center of the Sun (Nordeste do Brasil)
Dengo
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Add to my PlaylistSina de Cantador - Raimundo Sodré (6,839 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistMagnetismo - Raimundo Sodré (6,323 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistSacando a Cana - Raimundo Sodré (5,933 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistA Massa - Raimundo Sodré (4,990 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistMêrêrê - Raimundo Sodré (5,445 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistJardim do Amor - Raimundo Sodré (4,662 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistDebaixo do Céu - Raimundo Sodré (4,138 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistDesejo de Amar - Raimundo Sodré (3,849 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistOração pra Yá Oxum - Raimundo Sodré (3,729 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistYá África - Raimundo Sodré (3,498 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistMeu Rio, Cadê o Papel - Raimundo Sodré (3,168 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistCasa de Trois - Raimundo Sodré (2,886 plays)
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Add to my PlaylistMulher é Laço que Prende o Coração do Va... (2,547 plays)
► Pre Brazil our work (in NYC) included "rescuing" royalties for artists including Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Ray Barretto, Airto Moreira, Earl Carroll of The Cadillacs, Rob Royer of Bread, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin) and others.
► These people made it, for a while at least (in the case of Earl Carroll). But talent and even genius are more often than not insufficient to carry art away from its point of origin. And things can change (as they did for Earl and Raimundo and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos and how many others?). Hence the matrix.
