Oscar peterson, Horace Silver, Scott Joplin, Art Tatum, Art Farmer, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Brahms, Akiko Yano, Hiroko Kokubu, Fumiko Ito, Mamoru Furuta, Yapi, Trio Toykeat, Vinx, Dr. John, Misako Odani, Brief and Trunks, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ben Folds Five, Chucho Valdez, Count Basie, Happiness, Sadness, madness, loneliness, LOVE and FOOD
Aya Kato: pianist, keyboard player, songwriter, composer and arranger of everything from jazz, to children's music, to rock and roll.
To Aya, MUSIC is like RICE: she loves it and needs it to be herself. If RICE is the meal that nourishes her body, MUSIC is the meal that nourishes her soul. And for Aya Kato, the music has been in her heart since the very beginning. Before she was even born she was keeping a rhythm with her little fists on the soft walls her mother's womb. And then, as a young girl, she began using chopsticks and the stems of dandelions (tampopo) to keep the beat on rice bowls. At the age of three, Aya started taking lessons and began her mastery of the piano. While she has become a veritable maven of the ivories, she has also demonstrated her musical agility in taking up other instruments: the Taiko (a traditional Japanese percussion instrument), drums, marimba, flute, melodica, and electric bass.
A Native crazian (crazy asian), Aya arrived in the United States on the morning of her 20th birthday with twenty dollars in her pocket and a small folder of old, tattered sheet music. Within a month she was involved in the Boston music scene, writing songs and songs and more songs, playing shows and recording her own compositions. After moving to New York city, Aya found herself working with a seemingly unending list of amazing musicians. She has been everything from a solo pianist, to an accompanist, to the music director of a twenty-piece band.
On top of all this, Aya is working on her own album of children's music and is also busy organizing and arranging music for her own piano trio called Merry and Tomato.
There are 24 hours in a day. Aya uses them all. Keep an eye on Aya Kato, and if your heart is in need of some SPIRITUAL RICE, then keep your ear open, too. I edited my profile with Thomas Myspace Editor V4.4 (www.strikefile.com/myspace)
Greetings from J-Pop World, Aya Kato. We just interviewed your Jazz friend, Mamiko Watanabe. Know an artist you’d like to see interviewed next? Let us know.
