biography
Pianist Mika Sasaki is a sought-after chamber musician, soloist and educator based in New York City. Since her solo debut with the Sinfonia of Cambridge at age seven, she appeared twice with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and more recently with the 92Y Orchestra. Mika has performed frequently in the U.S., Europe and Japan, at venues including the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie, Steinway Hall, Alice Tully Hall, 92nd Street Y, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Palazzo Chigi Saracini (Italy), Minatomirai Hall (Japan), Tokyo Bunka Kaikan (Japan), Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, and live on WQXR radio. Her solo debut CD album "Obsidian: Mika Sasaki plays Clara Schumann" was released on Yarlung Records in 2016, highly acclaimed by the Online Merker as "illuminat[ing] the artistic inspiration and creative exchange between these three Romantic souls," Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms.
A versatile pianist praised for her musicianship, Mika recently began a two-year fellowship with Ensemble Connect (formerly Ensemble ACJW), a program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and the Weill Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education, teaching and performing chamber music around the city while focusing on audience engagement, advocacy, and entrepreneurship. Her love for chamber music and curiosity in exploring repertoire both new and old have led her to collaborate in diverse ensembles, sometimes serving as score-reader for conductors' classes, rehearsal pianist for choruses, vocal coach, instrumental collaborator, or as toy pianist, celesta player or harpsichordist in small ensembles and orchestras.
As an accomplished chamber musician, Mika was invited to Music@Menlo as an international program artist, as well as the Tanglewood Music Center as a Leonard Bernstein Fellow, where her interpretation of Schubert’s “Grand Duo” for four-hands was hailed as a “colorful reading of the work … [with] nuance and sensitivity to Schubert’s music.” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). Other festival appearances include the Estherwood Music Festival (U.K.), Aspen Music Festival, Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, Mannes Beethoven Institute, Icicle Creek Chamber Music Festival, Accademia Musicale Chigiana (Italy), Taos School of Music, ChamberFest at Juilliard, and the Focus! Festival. In 2016, she performed and taught as Artist in Residence at the pianoSonoma at Juilliard winter workshop in New York City, and pianoSonoma's summer festival in Sonoma County, California, working with adult participants of all ages. Her summer engagements this year include teaching and performing at the Rushmore Music Festival in South Dakota, and the Danbury Music Centre's Chamber Music Intensive and Charles Ives Concert Series in Connecticut.
An avid proponent of new music, Mika frequently collaborates with composers of her generation, whose pieces she has recorded and premiered. She has worked with John Harbison, Jonathan Dawe, Robert Sirota, Peter Serkin, John Heiss, Michael Hersch, David Smooke, and James Matheson, among others, and has appeared in contemporary programs at the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, National Sawdust, Roulette, Juilliard, New York City Ballet Choreographic Institute, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. More recently, she was featured in Milton Babbitt’s centennial celebrations at the Focus! Festival in Lincoln Center and at Spectrum in 2016, and collaborated with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw in the world premiere of Stucco & Brocatelle, commissioned by Carnegie Hall.
Mika grew up in Demarest, New Jersey, and began her studies with Olegna Fuschi at the Juilliard Pre-College division at the age of seven. After moving to Tokyo, Japan, in 2001 with her family, she returned to the U.S. to pursue her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at the Peabody Conservatory under the tutelage of Benjamin Pasternack. A recipient of several awards in piano and chamber music during her studies at Peabody, she received the Tony & Tina Guilder Scholarship Award in Piano, William H. Kaltenbach Jr. Endowed Scholarship, and Clara Asherfeld Award for Accompanying. Upon graduation, she was awarded the Peggy & Yale Gordon Accompanist Recognition Prize and Sidney Friedberg Prize in Chamber Music, and was invited to join the U.S. national music honor society, Pi Kappa Lambda.
Mika is currently completing her doctoral studies at the Juilliard School, where she studied with Joseph Kalichstein as a recipient of the Isidore Kleppel Scholarship, Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship, Celia and Joseph Ascher Fund for Piano, and the C. V. Starr Doctoral Fellowship. At Juilliard, she held several teaching fellowships and faculty assistantships in Piano Literature, Sight-Reading, Secondary Piano, and Music Theory, and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Keyboard Skills and Piano Topics as a part-time faculty member. She currently teaches piano and keyboard skills in the Juilliard Evening Division, and works with middle school students at I.S. 025 in Queens as part of her fellowship with Ensemble Connect.
Last updated: July 2017
Photo by Arthur Moeller
Juilliard faculty bio
日本語はこちら (Japanese bio)
Pianist Mika Sasaki is a sought-after chamber musician, soloist and educator based in New York City. Since her solo debut with the Sinfonia of Cambridge at age seven, she appeared twice with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and more recently with the 92Y Orchestra. Mika has performed frequently in the U.S., Europe and Japan, at venues including the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie, Steinway Hall, Alice Tully Hall, 92nd Street Y, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Palazzo Chigi Saracini (Italy), Minatomirai Hall (Japan), Tokyo Bunka Kaikan (Japan), Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, and live on WQXR radio. Her solo debut CD album "Obsidian: Mika Sasaki plays Clara Schumann" was released on Yarlung Records in 2016, highly acclaimed by the Online Merker as "illuminat[ing] the artistic inspiration and creative exchange between these three Romantic souls," Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms.
A versatile pianist praised for her musicianship, Mika recently began a two-year fellowship with Ensemble Connect (formerly Ensemble ACJW), a program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and the Weill Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education, teaching and performing chamber music around the city while focusing on audience engagement, advocacy, and entrepreneurship. Her love for chamber music and curiosity in exploring repertoire both new and old have led her to collaborate in diverse ensembles, sometimes serving as score-reader for conductors' classes, rehearsal pianist for choruses, vocal coach, instrumental collaborator, or as toy pianist, celesta player or harpsichordist in small ensembles and orchestras.
As an accomplished chamber musician, Mika was invited to Music@Menlo as an international program artist, as well as the Tanglewood Music Center as a Leonard Bernstein Fellow, where her interpretation of Schubert’s “Grand Duo” for four-hands was hailed as a “colorful reading of the work … [with] nuance and sensitivity to Schubert’s music.” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). Other festival appearances include the Estherwood Music Festival (U.K.), Aspen Music Festival, Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, Mannes Beethoven Institute, Icicle Creek Chamber Music Festival, Accademia Musicale Chigiana (Italy), Taos School of Music, ChamberFest at Juilliard, and the Focus! Festival. In 2016, she performed and taught as Artist in Residence at the pianoSonoma at Juilliard winter workshop in New York City, and pianoSonoma's summer festival in Sonoma County, California, working with adult participants of all ages. Her summer engagements this year include teaching and performing at the Rushmore Music Festival in South Dakota, and the Danbury Music Centre's Chamber Music Intensive and Charles Ives Concert Series in Connecticut.
An avid proponent of new music, Mika frequently collaborates with composers of her generation, whose pieces she has recorded and premiered. She has worked with John Harbison, Jonathan Dawe, Robert Sirota, Peter Serkin, John Heiss, Michael Hersch, David Smooke, and James Matheson, among others, and has appeared in contemporary programs at the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, National Sawdust, Roulette, Juilliard, New York City Ballet Choreographic Institute, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. More recently, she was featured in Milton Babbitt’s centennial celebrations at the Focus! Festival in Lincoln Center and at Spectrum in 2016, and collaborated with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw in the world premiere of Stucco & Brocatelle, commissioned by Carnegie Hall.
Mika grew up in Demarest, New Jersey, and began her studies with Olegna Fuschi at the Juilliard Pre-College division at the age of seven. After moving to Tokyo, Japan, in 2001 with her family, she returned to the U.S. to pursue her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at the Peabody Conservatory under the tutelage of Benjamin Pasternack. A recipient of several awards in piano and chamber music during her studies at Peabody, she received the Tony & Tina Guilder Scholarship Award in Piano, William H. Kaltenbach Jr. Endowed Scholarship, and Clara Asherfeld Award for Accompanying. Upon graduation, she was awarded the Peggy & Yale Gordon Accompanist Recognition Prize and Sidney Friedberg Prize in Chamber Music, and was invited to join the U.S. national music honor society, Pi Kappa Lambda.
Mika is currently completing her doctoral studies at the Juilliard School, where she studied with Joseph Kalichstein as a recipient of the Isidore Kleppel Scholarship, Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship, Celia and Joseph Ascher Fund for Piano, and the C. V. Starr Doctoral Fellowship. At Juilliard, she held several teaching fellowships and faculty assistantships in Piano Literature, Sight-Reading, Secondary Piano, and Music Theory, and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Keyboard Skills and Piano Topics as a part-time faculty member. She currently teaches piano and keyboard skills in the Juilliard Evening Division, and works with middle school students at I.S. 025 in Queens as part of her fellowship with Ensemble Connect.
Last updated: July 2017
Photo by Arthur Moeller
Juilliard faculty bio
日本語はこちら (Japanese bio)