I had 3 solo recitals this spring, and I played the last one at Newport Beach Library yesterday. Newport Beach is located in Orange County, and it is more than 60 miles from my house! Los Angeles area is huge!! So it was my first visit to Newport Beach. The library is a beautiful architecture, and the auditorium is located facing to the court yard. It gives us an open feeling. I liked it! I enjoyed performing there, and it is always nice to meet the audience after the performance. I chatted with many nice people. After the recital I went to Valencia (20 miles from my house, and opposite of Newport Beach!), Cal Arts, to perform with a young and talented trombone player. He played great, and I had a good time performing with him!

Los Angeles is still pretty cold, not like usual March weather. We have had so much rain this spring, and we are still using heater!

I attended her master class last week at Occidental College. She presented her recital a day before. I was very impressed by her class. As you know she is a super star!!! She has appeared at major opera houses, and sang with big conductors! She is a very nice person and a great teacher. She finds something to work with each students, and accomplishes her points in short time. And she is always positive, lively, fun and creative! She connects to people. Again I enjoyed attending her class, and meeting with her.

It is Roman Polansky’s new suspense movie.  It is pretty good, especially the actors and actresses have done a great job! I like Ewan McGregor’s slightly nervous, but brave writer in this movie. He was good in the movie “The Men Who Stare At Goats”, and hisrole is similar in this movie. The movie is full of beautiful scenery and twists!  The ending is not convincing to me, but the story is so twisty that we get involved deeply. Pierce Brosnan is no longer James Bond, but he is a wonderful charactor actor.

Congratulations for all of trombone players at “Trombone Day” at CSU-Fullerton on Saturday 6, February! It was a great day! And Big Congratulations for Prof. Bob Sanders! He is the one who has worked hard to organize this wonderful event. I believe I was only non-trombone player that day! Piano is not an ensemble instrument (we do piano duet and 4 hands!), but we can collaborate with many different musicians. The truth is we don’t have “Piano Ensemble” with 20 pianists! It is so nice to see so many of same instrumentalists get together in a good supportive spirit. It seemed like “Brotherhood” to me.

I performed with John Rojak, who is a member of American Brass Quintet, and active in NY area. He was the featured artist. I had a great time getting know him, rehearsing, and performing with him. As I said “Trombone Day” was a big success all of the activities, concerts, ensemble rehearsals, lecture, panel discussion– went so well. It was a full energy day despite of heavy rain and flood (the concert hall was heavily flooded.). I was even more honored to be at the party hosted by another great trombone player, Andy Malloy, on Sunday. Great Music, Nice People, and Lots of FUN!

This movie is an opposite of the movie I saw little bit ago. Avator is the story of fantasy depicted in the real world. Dr. Parnassus was the real story depicted in the fantasy world.  I enjoyed Avator more than I thought. The picture is impressive with 3D and beautiful, but the story is pretty simple. I suppose they made it simple purposely to feature the picture, and for any age and for any people in any countries. And it is a typical Hollywood movie that we know from the very beginning who is bad and who is good. Compare to the great 3D, like “Terminator” in the Universal Studio 3D is not always great in Avator. I sometime took off the glasses to see the difference, and I could not tell the dimensions sometimes–.

Anyway it is a wonderful entertaining movie for everyone!

The title is telling us what kind of movie it might be! It is a colorful, psychological, Monty-Python-like, imaginative–movie. It is sometime like “Wizard of Oz”, sometime “Alice the Wonderland”. If you like cartoon “Lio” on paper you would like it! The character acted by Heath Ledger is again a very difficult role. The music is very effective in this fantasy world. And the combination of Man-made set and the digitally created one is good! I truly enjoyed it.

Committee of Professional Women for Los Angeles Philharmonic had a 45th Anniversary Celebration yesterday, Saturday 1/9, and I was invited to play my piano recital at William Andrew Clark Library at UCLA (please see photos in Photo Section on this homepage). Los Angeles is a very big city, and there are so many wonderful venues for concerts. It was the first time to visit this beautiful and historical library for me, and simply I fell in love with this concert room. Mr. Clark was a founder of LA Phil so this venue was a perfect selection for this celebration.

I have performed for different committees of Los Angeles Philharmonic, and it has been my pleasure to play for them and to meet those wonderful people who support music with their hearts. I had a great time performing in this beautiful music room, and communicating with the audience through music yesterday. Mr. Clark was a big music lover, and this was his passion to have this wonderful music room in his estate. I performed; Granados-Valses poeticos, Piazzolla-contrabajissimo, Mompou-tres canciones y danzas, Rachmaninov-Op. 23 #2 and #5, and Op. 32 #5, Kapustin-Toccatina, Gershwin-Rhapsody in Blue. As always I shared interesting anecdotes with the audience between playing.

I am so fortunate to get those wonderful opportunities to perform. Thank you for inviting me to be  a part of this celebration!!

It has been already a week past since 2010 started! Again,

Happy New Year!  It is a tiger year in our Japanese calender. How is your new year going?? I spent for 5days in Indiana visiting my husband’s family in December (We came back just in time to celebrate New Years’ Eve. Huh– there was a bottle of chilled champagne in the fridge!). It is good to feel COLD once in a while. Living in California is just great, but I sometime miss 4 seasons. Japan has it, and we live according to the seasons. The food is different in each season as well.

My playing-with-different-cellists life is over now after yesterday. I played with Brook Speltz (Curtis graduate 08′)  in December. He surely sounded wonderful, technically strong and musically convincing, and I had a great time playing with him. He is seeking the chamber music opportunities in his future.  I am focusing on my solo program which is coming up VERY soon! I will perform my favorite composers and pieces on Saturday 9th for LA Phil’s Committee members. I will repeat this program for more occasions in this spring. It seems busy, but very productive spring is ahead of me. There are many music waiting on my piano to be practiced!

We had a piano studio recital at Occidental College last night, and I was so happy to hear everyone playing wonderfully! I have 16 students this semester(Please see a photo from last night. One student could not stay til the end, and one student could not participate because of her father’s illness.), and I enjoy working with each student, and seeing their progress. Occidental College is a liberal arts college, not a conservatory. So music study is not competitive. It is to express and to explore their music. Of course if students choose to major in music the situation gets serious, but it won’t be like a conservatory! Our program last night was diverse, from classic composers like Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Mozart, Granados, Burgmuller, to Tenmon, Spektor, Kahn, Argent, Winston, and Rosenburg (his own jazz composition). One of students sang and played piano. She has a beautiful voice.  Compare to my education, going to an performing arts high school, to B.M., M.M., and D.M.A. , majoring all piano performance, the students at Occidental College explore many areas in their lives during these 4 years, including MUSIC! We have a wonderful “Study Abroad Program”. Some of my students have gone to different countries for a semester or a year. But under this program they don’t n need to delay their graduation. I feel very rewarding to teach students and to discuss about the music and their lives at Occidental College.

Have a wonderful holiday to all of my students and to you!