Rieko Okuda

Rieko Okuda is a pianist and a composer from Japan. She began to play Classical music at the age of 3. In her young age, she attended to Kaizuka city Piano Competition in Osaka, and got the first prize. She also studied Music Therapy at Doshisha Women's College. Music Therapy led her into Contemporary music, Improvised music, and Jazz. After her study in the college, she moved to USA to study Jazz music. She fell right into the Jazz scene in USA, performing with some of the great American Jazz musicians (Bob Mintzer, Jon Faddis, John Fedchock etc) at several jazz festivals such as North Texas Jazz Festival, Nortredam Jazz Festival to name a few. A couple of years later, she got interested in Free Jazz and Improvised music while she was in Phliladelphia. She performed with the great improvisers includes Marshall Allen (from San Ra Orchestra), Elliott Levine (recorded with Cecil Taylor), and Calvin Weston (recorded with Ornette Coleman). Her interests in Improvised music led her to move to Berlin. She performs with various musicians in Berlin ex. Tobias Delius, Ignaz Schick, Axel Dörner, Els Vendaweyer, and Linda Frederickson, ect. Also, she collaborates with contemporary dancers such as Akemi Nagao, Jenny Ocampo, and Annapaola Leso (from Sasha Waltz.) She performs at several experimental festivals: A'Larme Festival, JOE Festival Essen, Brda Contemporary Music Festival, Sound Disobiedience, XChange Festival, Experymental Festival, Flux Festival, and Soundance Festival to name a few.

In 2017 and 2018, she got the residency in Elektronik Music Studio (EMS) in Stockholm, Sweden. This residency experiences inspired her to Electro-Acoustic field, and she started to invite the electronics to her piano solo pieces. Her first Electro-Acoustic solo album "Paranorm" was released from Japanese record lable, Athor Harmonics, on Feburary 2018. "Paranorm" was performed at Koncertkirken Blagards Plads (DK), Ausland (DE), FLUX Festival (DE), and Vardklockans Församling (SE). In 2020, she has gotten the residency in Visby International Centere for Composers (VICC) to extend her experience, and find more possibilities to create various sounds and composition techniques.