About Shigeki
Kawahara...
I was born in Albany, New York in 1960. One year later, I moved to
Japan with my family and had been brought up there. When I was in
US in 1960, I was only a small baby. At the time when I came to
Japan, I did not speak either English or Japanese (any language)
yet. You see, my real mother tongue is Japanese, not English. At
the age of three, I started playing the piano. Although I was not a
serious apprentice for my piano teacher, I am sure that I really
enjoyed playing the piano, music at large, anyway.
In 1972, I bought an album of
Quincy Jones named "Smackwater Jack". I liked TV
program "Ironside" at the time. Soundtrack was produced by Quincy
Jones. This album turned me to Jazz music. It was really
fascinating for me to listen to such rich and jazzy arrangement I
had never listened to before. Ever since then, I became a long time
big fan of Quincy. I have all his albums. I learned many cool
sounds of musical instruments such as Rhodes Electric piano, Mini
Moog, Hammond B-3, Solina String Ensemble, and many more.
During my high school age, I joined a brass band where I had
experiences in playing trumpets and saxophones. In that brass band,
I became more like an arranger/ band leader than a horn player,
practicing arrangement of bigband, and learning characteristics of
different horn instruments. You can see, I was already a
"Quincy-wanna-bee".
In my first 3 years in college (1979-82), I was most active and
busy as a keyboard and piano player mostly in live performance. I
was playing with a 9-piece jazz/ fusion combo around 50 live
sessions per year. At the time, Joe Sample and Herbie Hancock were
(sure, they still are) my idle. "
Rhodes
Piano" was a main keyboard. Even now, Rhodes sound is a basic
ingredient of my sound arrangement.
I bought
YAMAHA CS-20M and learned how to manipulate and
play synthsizers (analogue ones with lots of nobs and switches, of
course, there was no digital ones). It was monophonic, really heavy
and bulky, but a dream gadget for me to create my own sound
waves.
During 1979-1983, I had one regular place to play solo jazz piano.
The place was a small cozy bar restaurant in Jiyugaoka, Tokyo.
Every Wednesday and Friday night, I played mellow standard jazz
tunes there. A grand piano was placed in the very center of the
restaurant and it was surrounded by a big bar table. I was playing
almost face to face with the audience.
In August 1983, I went back to Albany, New York. I joined Graduate
School in
State
University of New York at Albany for Master's degree in public
economics and policy. Well, this was the period I studied most in
my life. Where was Jazz? In Albany, there was an old jazz place
called "Gemini Jazz Cafe". Every once in a while, I went there and
enjoyed listening to and playing music.
In August 1985, I've got my degree and came back to Japan. In April
1986, started working as an economist for an international
consulting organization. This makes me traveling around the world
for over 200 days a year. For a while, I managed to play with a
local jazz band "EM2" in Yokohama, Japan, for live performance.
Later in the middle of 1990's, I became way too busy to be a
regular pianist. I had to stop live performance...
Music, however, continues to be my "Another World". Around the
corners of Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, Rabat (Morocco), and wherever
possible, I pop into small bars with the piano and "play it
again".
Thanks to up-to-date technology in recording using Macintosh and
MOTU Performer, now I can produce recording works of my own tunes
with layers of rich sound of arrangement. I have always wanted to
be "Quincy". Internet and nice people like
CD Baby
made it possible for me to share my feelings of sound all around
the world. People from Switzerland, Brazil, Germany, and many other
places (I never met them!) had already purchased my CDs. My music
will soon be made available in iTunes Music Store as well.
Fascinating...isn't it?
