Hidemi Akaiwa
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Hidemi Akaiwa
Image courtesy of the artist
Hidemi Akaiwa is a Japanese pianist/composer. She started learning piano at the age of three, and as a youth won many classical music competitions. At the age of 30, she shifted from a successful, corporate career to studying jazz music. She was awarded a full scholarship to attend Berklee where she participates in the Global Jazz Institute, the Jazz and Gender Justice Program, and the Planet MicroJam Institute.
While at Berklee she received the prestigious Toshiko Akiyoshi Composition Award. She has had the privilege of studying with world-class musicians Danilo Perez, Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, Billy Childs, David Fiuczynski, and many others. Her passion is to create a new art form infusing the tenets of Japanese Zen with the sounds of jazz and contemporary classical music.
She combines Japanese microtonal techniques with Western theoretical constructs using synthesizers and acoustic instruments that utilize microtonal vocabularies. In 2021 she was invited to the Vermont Jazz Center Solo Piano Festival as an emerging artist. Her message to the universe is that “it is never too late to chase dreams that emanate from your soul."