Photo by ICHI (Ocean Photo Studio)
The recorder is my MEDIUM.
Voices I hear become music,
from nature,
from art,
from people.
YUKI is a L.A. based Japanese recorder player.
She was absorbed in playing the recorder from the age of 5, and was a member of the recorder club at her elementary school where she met the world-famous recorder player Minoru Yoshizawa.
This encounter made a significant impact on her life and she ended up being under the tutelage of Mr. Yoshizawa for over 25 years. YUKI has won the gold prize in the solo artist category in the Japanese Nationwide Recorder Competition three times.
Besides working as an actress, YUKI has been focusing on her career as a recorder player in the recent years which has in turn influenced her acting in a positive way. In Japan, she annually performs in a concert at YAMAHA and at the Grand Festival in shrines. She has also played the recorder on TV series in Taiwan.
At the end of 2018, YUKI went and saw “The Beauty of Blooming Flowers” exhibition at the National Palace museum in Taiwan. While she was enjoying the ancient flower drawings, a melody in the likeness of the sound of the recorder came to her. It rang in her ears all day that when she returned to her hotel that day, she immediately recorded the tune using a voice recorder in the bathroom. That was the beginning of her journey into making recorder music.
YUKI has since continued to make recorder music from art, landscapes, people, sunlight,...and even vegan cheese to this day. She is also constantly collaborating with artists and galleries, and making music videos in her own project "MUSIC from ART" and devoted her time to grow her career as a professional recorder player. In recent years, she continued to make recorder music from art, landscapes, people, sunlight, and even cheese to this day.
In 2020, YUKI made her first Los Angeles debut, 'Morning Prayer', in collaboration with music producer & composer Andrew Bong. She performed this piece for the closing night Gala at Asian World Film Festival 2020-2021 and that docu-style music Video directed by filmmaker David Neptune won the “Best Film No Dialogue” at Showlow Film Festival and was selected into The Valley Film Festival.
She doesn’t call what she does as expressing herself through music but sees herself acting as an “intermediary” between the recorder and art, nature and people.