“An innovator and prodigious talent of such magnitude that cannot be fully understood until you see her perform live.” – All About Jazz.com

An icon of contemporary jazz, pianist Keiko Matsui creates music both powerful and introspective, blending Western and Eastern musical influences. Her exquisite style of Japanese jazz spans three decades of international acclaim. Elegant piano melodies, a free spirit and creative genius mark her return to the Ferst stage.

Matsui’s music is powerful and introspective, blending both Western and Eastern musical influences. She has a very spiritual view of composing music, feeling out each composition as though it were, in her words, “coming to me from another space, another dimension,” and “catching notes from the silence and then simply placing them together”.  Matsui sees music as “the great gifts from the human souls from the past, for the children of the future”. She believes that music has a power to bring people together and change their lives. “We are connected by music,” Matsui wrote, “as the Ocean connects the continents”.

A lover of nature, Matsui often makes reference to plants, animals, the elements, and other natural features and phenomena in her song titles. She shows a special fascination with the moon as a number of her compositions refer to the moon in their titles.

Matsui’s music shows signs of evolving over the years. Her American debut album A Drop of Water showed a promise of east meets west with a jazz fusion flavor. However, her recordings for MCA Records in the early 1990s lacked this appeal and, for many, sounded indistinguishable from the rest of what is now known as smooth jazz. Starting with Cherry Blossom, though, her music increased in popularity as she differentiated herself from the rest of contemporary jazz. By the time Sapphire was released in 1995, her music flirted with everything from funk music to Latin and world music.