Kaori Nakano

Kaori Nakano

Biography

Kaori Nakano is a Japan-based composer, arranger, pianist, jazz pianist and educator.

She has taught popular piano, jazz piano, and adult piano courses at Yamaha Music School for 30 years.

She has taught performance, improvisation, and music theory to beginners, piano teachers, 
and those wishing to pass their piano teaching qualifications.


From the United States, she has released works such as jazz ensembles in the field of music education.

In 2021 and 2022, her jazz ensemble works were selected, introduced and performed at the Jazz New Music Reading Session of The Midwest Clinic, 
the largest music education conference in the United States.

In Japan, she has published a large number of musical scores, such as arranging song teaching materials for nursery teachers, kindergartens, and elementary schools, and arranging musical scores 
for teacher employment exam practical tasks.


She started taking piano lessons at the Yamaha music school in Japan at the age of three, 
and took private piano lessons during her elementary school days in Bangkok, Thailand.

Since she was a university student, she had experience in performance activities, 
so she started teaching piano and electronic organ performance and arranging as a lecturer for musician training courses such as wedding halls.Interested in Eastern philosophy, 
she majored in Indian Buddhism at the 370-year-old Ryukoku University in Kyoto, 
where she earned a master's degree and later doctoral credits.

Her research theme was the Vijñapti-mātra (tā) of the Yugagyo-only school, 
one of the two major philosophical currents of Mahayana Buddhism.
Music is a means of expression, 
and she thought it was important to find the content itself to express. 
Instead of majoring in music, at her university 
she wanted to study Eastern thought systematically, 
partly because she is Japanese and partly because she spent her childhood in Asia.

In addition, she has cleared DTM and Midi certification exams, 
and has produced music for gymnastics floor exercise, Tai Chi, puppet theater, etc., 
which have been sold as DVDs and broadcast.

While teaching as a Yamaha instructor, she felt a strong need to study jazz by having a jazz class. 

She then began studying jazz piano again and arranging jazz ensembles, 
which led her to seriously compose music.