Piano

David Kai

David Kai grew up in Toronto as a Sansei attending the Centennial-Japanese United Church where he was highly involved in its music ministry. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto, the Humber College music program where he specialized in arranging and composing, and The Centre for Christian Studies. Commissioned as a diaconal minister […]

Bruce Tatemichi

Bruce was born in Montreal in 1953, and began piano lessons at five years old. In high school he first studied the clarinet, and soon after the saxophone. Along the way, he taught himself how to play the drums, bass and the flute. Bruce is a jazz musician, but he plays many styles including classical, […]

Jamie Parker

Jamie Parker is a concert pianist with an extensive career both as a soloist and as part of chamber ensembles, including the renowned Gryphon Trio. Born in British Columbia, he studied at the Vancouver Academy of Music and the University of British Columbia, and continued on to The Juilliard School. He is now a teacher […]

Vernon Hakkaku

Vernon Hakkaku was a well-known piano accompanist for many Nisei singers during and after the Second World War. He was known for having a distinctively Japanese style which suited the Nisei singers well. Terry Watada recalls: ‘Vernon Hakkaku was a postal worker in Toronto. His house in Cabbagetown was sparsely furnished, with only a baby […]

Gordon Hashimoto

Gordon Hashimoto is a Montreal-based editor, filmmaker and musician. As a student at Concordia University, he variously produced, wrote, directed, and edited a number of experimental short films; as a professional in the filmmaking industry, he works primarily as a picture editor or assistant editor, on such productions as Rene Levesque, Fries with That, and […]

Mariko Sato

Mariko Sato is a Tokyo-born concert pianist, accompanist, and teacher based in Montreal. She immigrated to Canada at the age of 18 to study music at Laval University in Quebec City, eventually earning both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. She has gone on to an extensive teaching and performance career, performing on three continents and […]

Megumi Masaki

Megumi Masaki is a concert pianist and multimedia artist. The innovation and breadth of her artistic activity, dynamic temperament and ‘riveting and mind-expanding’ performances have earned her a reputation as a leading interpreter of contemporary music. She specializes in exploring how sound, image, text and movement can be integrated in multimedia works. Masaki frequently collaborates […]

Boko Suzuki

Boko Suzuki is a music director, composer, and arranger formerly based in Toronto and New York and now in Colorado. He began his music career as a keyboard and piano player in the mid-1980s in Toronto, and by the 1990s was conducting productions of musical theatre classics such as Phantom of the Opera and Miss […]

Roy Miya

Roy Miya is a musician who was born in 1925, Vancouver. At the age of 16, he first heard Vernon Hakkaku on piano playing Amapola, written by Joseph Lacalle, while on a boat on the Skeena River. Roy was so impressed, he began to teach himself piano. His brother Louie introduced him to stride piano, […]

Jon Kimura Parker

Jon Kimura Parker is a pianist who regularly performs as a soloist with orchestras around the world. After studying piano with his mother, Keiko Parker, and his uncle, Edward Parker, as a child, he went on to train at the Vancouver Academy of Music, the University of British Columbia, the Victoria Conservatory, the Banff Centre, […]