Profile

Born in Tokyo, Ayuko Nanase started playing the piano in parallel with acoustic training at the age of five. She did improvising and made fragmentary compositions on the piano in early childhood while she was interested in cartoonist or weather forecaster. Getting high praise at the national school music competition, she went into her professional career. She studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, not only western classical music but also various styles of music all over the world with Prof. Fumio Koizumi (Ethnomusicology) doing domestic field works of indigenous music. Her graduation work is the analysis of the tunes of Gagaku (Japanese traditional court music) considering the process of memorizing music, which was highly acclaimed. Simultaneously she played the piano and synthesizer in originally arranged genre-straddling style, and became in demand for theater music or TV accompanying music.

From 1987 beginning to use her stage name, she released original works in her self-produced recitals, and also tried to follow a kind of pop-music style with poems written by her, using multitrack recording until 1991.

In 1989 Ayuko joined the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra principal woodwind chamber ensemble as an arranger and pianist leaded by the principal flutist Yoshio Saitoh, and appeared at many concert halls all over the country.

In 1990 and 1991 she recorded for solo CDs as the data of electric piano player, of which contents were arrangement works from chanson tunes (Toshiba-EMI music publisher/ Rittoh music, Japan).

From 1993 she started to release music books related to flute music with the editorial supervisor Yoshio Saitoh (Toa music corp. / Ongaku no tomo sha corp., Japan).

From 2000 she has continued to release music booklets for flute ensemble (Muramatsu Original Series) with the publisher Muramatsu members club (by the world famous flute maker Muramatsu Inc.), which have a large circulation covering the wide range of flutist in Japan. The pieces of MOS have been highly praised and played by the top class performers inside and outside Japan. 

In 2004 the commissioned work “Pilgrimage suite”, which was written for the chamber music concert of Prof. Hayao Kawai (Clinical psychologist, Chief of the cultural affairs agency) as an amateur flutist, acquired a good reputation, and then was performed in Europe by the group that featured Kawai in 2006.

She has continued her field-work of music in over ten countries abroad, and especially in Europe many national music academies and libraries house her music books. From 2011 she often visits Europe mainly to Denmark, introducing the thought of Danish welfare in order to adapt it to the idea of Japanese ordinary life, and continues to make various works partly quoted from Danish music like “hybrid” music.

She sometimes provides coaching of her works to amateur groups. She has also  worked as a visiting music supervisor at the Shinganji Gakuen for many years.