Search - Satomi Saeki :: Japanese Koto Music

Originally from Miyazaki, Japan, Satomi Saeki is one of the leading koto players in North America. Her father, a player and maker of the shakuhachi (bamboo flute), introduced her to Japanese traditional music. As a child, Saeki learned the koto (horizontal harp), and later she started playing the sangen/shamisen (3-stringed Japanese lute) and the juushichigen (17-stringed horizontal harp). While attending the prestigious Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku (National Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music), Saeki studied music theory and traditional Japanese instruments, focussing on the koto under the direction of some of Japan s leading koto masters. After graduating in 1991, Saeki spent the following year at the 37th Japanese Traditional Music School of the N.H.K. (Japan Broadcasting Cooperation) in Tokyo, where she studied and performed modern pieces with prominent composers in an orchestra setting. Over the next couple of years, Saeki also performed numerous concerts in Tokyo with eminent koto and shakuhachi masters. Since moving to Victoria, British Columbia in 1994, Saeki has been teaching and performing koto music at various educational and cultural venues in North America. She returns regularly to Japan to give concerts. In 2005, Saeki and shakuhachi player Alcvin Takegawa Ramos released the CD, Japanese Traditional Koto and Shakuhachi. Saeki s interest in performing koto music on the international stage was inspired by a concert in Hawaii in 1991. As she looked out into the audience, Saeki noticed several Japanese-American women were visibly moved while listening to traditional Japanese music. As a Japanese woman living in Canada and raising Japanese-Canadian children, it is an emotional state Saeki can easily identify with.