Chihiro Yamanaka
Since graduating with top honours from the Berklee College of Music, Japanese pianist Chihiro Yamanaka has been acclaimed as a most accomplished musician and composer with tremendous international potential.
While at Berklee, in 2000, she received Down Beat’s Outstanding Performance Award and also won the Sisters In Jazz competition, organized by the International Association for Jazz Education.
She has since won the HMV Award for the Best Jazz Album of 2004 and, in 2005, was voted Best New Artist in the poll of the Japanese jazz publication, Swing Journal…
Chihiro Yamanaka began studying piano at the age of four and, when she was 12, won the Grand Prize at a new talent competition in Gunma, Japan.
After studying at the Royal Academy of Music in England, she moved to the United States and continued her studies at Berklee. Chihiro has performed with some highly distinguished jazzmen since graduating, including Clark Terry, Gary Burton, George Russell, Curtis Fuller, Ed Thigpen, Nancy Wilson, George Benson and Herbie Hancock.
She was resident pianist with the all-girl big band DIVA. She has performed at major venues in the United States, including the Kennedy Center in Washington and New York’s Carnegie Hall and has also played in the Vienna State Opera House, in the JVC Jazz Festival in New York, the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Idaho, the Tokyo Jazz Festival and the Umbria Jazz Festival.