About Me

About Me

A pianist and composer based in Hamamatsu.
She pursues a unique musical expression that transcends genres and forms.

Guided by the philosophy that “every person has a color bestowed by heaven,” she centers her activities around the term “Amairo” (Heavenly Color). Through "Amairo Project," the project she heads, she also produces the "Amairo Music Concert," a concert where the unique "amairo" of both the performers and the audience shines through.

Below, I’ve put together my biography and the story of how I became who I am today.
If you’re interested, please take a look.

Mayuki Miyashita Biography

She was born on January 17, 2000, in Hakodate, Hokkaido, where her mother’s family lived.
She began attending Yamaha Music School at the age of 3 and started taking piano lessons with Ms. Chiyoe Torimoto at the age of 6.

She spent her childhood up to the age of 11 in her hometown of Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, before moving to Tennessee, USA, due to her father’s job transfer.
She honed her skills under the guidance of Dr. David Northington of the University of Tennessee.

At the age of 13, she gave her first solo recital. Since then, she has been fortunate to have numerous performance opportunities in the United States, where she has performed with orchestras and been invited to appear on the popular American radio program “From the Top,” at the Miami International Piano Festival, and as part of “The Evelyn Miller Young Pianist Series,” among other events, to give performances and solo recitals.

After returning to Japan at the age of 16, she transferred to the music program at Hamamatsu Gakugei High School, where she studied under Mr. Yusuke Maeda. She then went on to study in the Music Liberal Arts course (Piano Performance major) at Tokyo College of Music, studying with Dr. Atsuko Okada and Dr. Katsunori Ishii. She graduated at the top of her class in 2022.

To date, she has won first prize at the Midwest International Piano Competition, first prize at the Krystian Tkaczewski International Piano Competition, first prize at the MostArts Young Pianist Competition, and first prize at the Tokyo College of Music Competition, among others.

After graduating from college, she did not go on to graduate school but moved to Hamamatsu to pursue her own music.

Currently, she focuses on composing and performing her own original works, pursuing a free-spirited musical career that transcends genre boundaries.

How I Started Playing the Piano

I started playing the piano after a friend invited me to join the Yamaha Music School.
Ever since I was little, I was slower than everyone else at everything I did, and I was always kind of spacey, but apparently, I came alive whenever I played the keys. When my mom saw me like that, she thought, “This is it!” and enrolled me in piano lessons when I was six.
By the way, my mom isn’t a musician, but she loves music.

Ever since I started playing the piano, I’ve gradually become more like a normal person.
Playing the piano has helped me grow in many ways.

My Experience in the United States

When I was 11, my family moved to Tennessee, U.S. because of my father’s job transfer.
Those five years in the U.S. had a profound impact on shaping me both as a person and as a musician.
Maryville, Tennessee, where I lived, was a beautiful rural city, with almost no tall buildings in sight. There were lots of cows and horses, and wild rabbits would even come to play in our backyard. I remember how vast and vivid the sky was.

Fortunately, I met a wonderful American teacher, and I devoted myself to the piano while receiving so much love from him.
Every time I went to a lesson, my teacher would give me such a tight hug that I could barely breathe, and he placed particular emphasis on teaching me how to captivate an audience and perform effectively.

Amid all this, when I was 12, my father almost made me quit the piano.
My father knew absolutely nothing about music, but he was a very strict man. Since my teacher was a doctor at a university, the lesson fees were quite high. When my father saw that I was skipping practice or playing the piano half-heartedly, he sent my teacher an email saying, “Mayuki has decided to play the piano as a hobby from now on, so she will no longer be attending your lessons.” When I found out, I cried. I remember that even my younger brother, who had nothing to do with it, cried with me when he found out I’d been forced to quit the piano. It was at that moment that I first resolved to “become a professional pianist.”

From then on, I practiced one piece after another that my teacher assigned me and entered as many competitions as he recommended.
Fortunately, I was blessed with many performance opportunities. I performed in front of audiences of thousands, played piano concertos with orchestras… and had many opportunities to give solo recitals as well. Through competitions and performances, I met all sorts of wonderful people in various parts of the United States.
American audiences were truly warm, and I experienced—to the very fullest—the joy of moving people through my piano playing and the preciousness of connecting with others.

The Decision to Leave the World of Classical Music

After returning to Japan and transferring to a high school, I went on to study at the Tokyo College of Music, which offered a major where classes were taught in English.
Since the music college was truly a place to study classical music in depth, I devoted myself to my studies under the guidance of two wonderful teachers.

I love playing the piano, but what I loved most of all was performing in front of an audience.
Sharing my music with the audience and the listeners—and that moment when it truly reached them—was my joy and my reason for living.

In classical music, which is an art of interpretation, I believe the most important thing is to understand the composer’s intent and convey what the composer wanted to express through one’s own performance. There are so many truly wonderful pieces in classical music, and I love the sacred world it creates—it’s something I can’t even put into words. But for me, classical music was more like a tool for self-expression. There was something else I truly wanted to express through the piano, and it felt as though I was borrowing these wonderful classical pieces to do just that. Because of this, I’ve even been told that “my own personality comes through before the composer’s.”

However, since I believed that the world of classical music was the most valuable of all, I felt it was wrong and unacceptable that I couldn’t muster a strong interest in classical music itself, so I suppressed those feelings. But as I progressed through my third and fourth years of college, that sense of unease only deepened. When the time came to decide my path after graduation, I was truly torn. Studying abroad for a master’s degree to further master classical music… that was supposed to be the right path, and I began preparing for it, but somehow it just didn’t resonate with me.
What on earth did I want to do? What should I do…? After much deliberation, I decided to follow my intuition.
I gave up on going to graduate school and returned to my hometown of Hamamatsu—to search for my own way of self-expression.

There were other incidents after that which tried to steer me back toward classical music, but I never did return.

Letting go of classical music… it felt like letting go of life itself. I suppose I must have been quite attached to it.
By letting go of everything, I was left with nothing.
But I realized that this version of myself—with nothing at all—is what’s truly precious. Even though I have nothing, I’ve actually had everything all along.
Of course, I think this applies to everyone, not just me. Everything is already within us.

How I Started Composing

Ever since I was little, I’ve loved making up weird songs. Even after I moved back to Hamamatsu and started working, I was still making up weird songs.
But when it came to serious composing, that was a different story. I’d given up on composing, telling myself that I was strictly a performer and had no talent for writing music.

However, prompted by a certain event, I composed a piece in earnest for the first time in the summer of 2024.
At the time, I witnessed a taiko drum performer I was touring with—who had virtually no musical knowledge—composing and performing his own songs.
Seeing this gave me the courage to take that first step, realizing that it is possible to compose music even without specialized knowledge.
When we performed that piece on tour, the fact that it resonated with so many people and received such praise gave me confidence, and that’s when I began composing music.
I won’t go into the details of what happened from there, but it felt like a miracle—as if God were giving me a gentle push forward.

Since I don't like studying, I basically compose music based on intuition rather than knowledge.
When I'm in the zone, music sometimes come together so naturally that even I'm surprised.

It may seem like I started composing rather late after graduating from college, but I believe it was the perfect timing for me.
I also believe that the time I spent perfecting my piano playing through the wonderful world of classical music up until I graduated from college was a necessary part of my life.

Vision for the Future

When I was 10 years old, my school held a “Half-Adult Ceremony,” and I wrote my dream for the future in big letters on a sheet of drawing paper. What I wrote was, “An artist who can bring happiness to the whole world through singing and playing the piano.” As for singing, I’ve given up on singing myself (lol), but I think basically everything I wrote back then still holds true.

Continue to play the piano, which I love so much. Share the pieces I’ve composed myself.
I hope to fulfill the mission that has been entrusted to me.

And I hope that someday, we’ll live in a world where everyone, all over the globe, can live their lives while letting their own colors and individuality shine.
I don’t know what the future will look like, but I dream of creating a company—or something like that—that can make this a reality.

While I cherish every encounter with each individual, I also want to be someone who can make a difference in the lives of many people.
That is what brings me happiness.

That said, I’m not very good at overthinking things, so I’d like to just let things take their natural course from here on out.
I hope I can enjoy music, enjoy life, and gradually become the best version of myself.

Thank you for reading to the end♪