KEIKO’S MUSICAL BACKGROUND – AND HOW SHE BECAME A PIANO TEACHER
Keiko doesn't have the “typical” background of a piano teacher; this is her story …
Keiko has been a musician/songwriter almost all her life; playing the piano, the guitar and the bass guitar, singing, writing songs and producing. She has also been a teacher almost all her adult life, teaching languages and music.
Keiko began to learn the piano in Japan around the age of 4 and continued her piano lessons until she was around 15. She had two piano teachers as a child. Although she really loved music, she had such a bad experience with her second teacher who was very strict that she desperately wanted to quit the lessons but her mother wouldn’t let her. One night, Keiko ran away from home to convince her mother that she really had to go… And this was how Keiko eventually managed to quit her piano lessons.
She spent her teenage years in the 1980’s during the British Invasion craze, and like a lot of young people in Japan, she fell madly in love with bands from Britain at the time. She picked up the bass guitar and started to write songs herself. She then joined a band with people much older than her and was gigging in her home town for some years. After she graduated from high school, she moved to Britain with the bass guitar and a small 4-track recorder in her suitcase to form her own band there. She joined a few bands as a bassist, recorded and went on a few tours with them but her time in Britain ran out and had to head back home. Back in Japan, while she began her career as an English language teacher, she started to front a few bands as a singer and guitarist and the bands played her own materials.
After a very long break from piano playing, she could not keep away from the piano any longer because of one film that she had seen; “The Immortal Beloved”, a partly fictitious story about Beethoven. She absolutely fell in love with Beethoven the musician and his music and started playing his piano sonatas ‘religiously’ from then on. To her surprise, she found herself really enjoying playing the piano again – it was great to just play purely for pleasure, purely for herself.
In the meantime, she was offered a record deal by a small independent label in Tokyo to record a solo album. On this album, she wrote all of the songs, played all the instruments (with a help from a drum machine), sound engineered, recorded and produced all on her own. Her music was eclectic pop – a mixture of pop, rock, jazz, blues, classical and a bit of Latin. The album was entitled “27” under the name of Kay and was released by Japan-based BLOSSOM record label. The album was in the charts at some college radio stations in the U.S., but sadly, the owner of the label had to close his operations in Japan shortly after. Keiko chose to return to Britain to gain her Master’s degree in Teaching Japanese. After graduating from Durham University she moved to New Zealand to take up a 2 year contract teaching Japanese at tertiary in Palmerston North.
Keiko was fascinated by the vibrant music scene in Palmerston North, and when her contract with the college expired, she seriously restarted her piano lessons. She came in 2nd in a local piano competition and gained her LTCL in Piano Recital under the guidance of her mentor, Angela Cook, who was a local pianist/performer and piano teacher. Keiko was also heavily involved in running a large scale local music school for young students as Assistant Director for 8 years.
Keiko has been enjoying teaching the piano in her thriving studio in Palmerston North for approximately 10 years. There is a strong link between language and music; they are both used to communicate with others and they both give learners an immense joy and endless possibilities by opening up their worlds. Keiko has always enjoyed teaching these wonderful subjects. Also, having been a teacher for so many years to students from various ethnicities, backgrounds and different age groups, she has a very strong empathy with her students and is always keen to understand them and help them improve.
