Kazue Sawai

Kazue Sawai

Kazue Sawai as a koto musician. Born in Kyoto in 1941, At the age of eight she began studying at the school of Michio Miyagi and in 1963 she graduated from the music department of the Tokyo University of the Arts. In 1979, she and her husband Tadao Sawai started the Sawai Koto Institute. In 1979, her first solo recital won her the Award of Excellence in the music division of the National Arts Festival. She has engaged in a wide range of artistic activities, from her “Koto Yugyo” tours, in which she will go virtually anywhere in Japan that makes a request, the contemporary music concert series “Triangle Music Tour” with Toshi Ichiyanagi and Sumire Yoshiwara that has performed at some 70 venues around Japan, recitals produced by Yuji Takahashi, and collaborations with a variety of artists in the genres of pop music, jazz, classical music and contemporary music. In 1989, she performed a new version of John Cage’s Three Dances for two prepared pianos in an arrangement for four prepared kotos, which she premiered at Studio 200 in the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo. Sawai has also been very active overseas, with invited performances at a variety of festivals in North America and Europe, including the New York Bang on a Can Festival, Germany’s Moers Jazz Festival and at the Paris Metropolitan Theatre, as the world tour of her Kazue Sawai Koto Ensemble. In 1999, Sawai performed the world premiere of Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina’s Koto Concerto (commissioned by the NHK Symphony Orchestra) and toured to the USA for performances (New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Boston Symphony Hall, the Chicago Symphony Hall and Lincoln Center, etc.).
Beginning in 2003, Sawai participated in the NPO Music Sharing school visit project led by violinist Midori Goto. In 2010, she played in the premiere of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Concerto for Koto and Orchestra . In addition to her Kazue Sawai – Koto 360° Viewpoint concert series with young artists from Japan and abroad since 2010, she has also toured with fellow koto artist Souju Nosaka in their “Two Maestros – Hengen Jizai” tour since 2011.

Sawai Koto Institute
https://sawaisoukyokuin.com/