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Mamiko Watanabe
Mamiko Watanabe was born in Fukuoka, Japan and began studying piano at age four at the Yamaha Music School. In 1999 she revived a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music and studied Jazz piano, Improvisation and Composition. She was a semi-finalist at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition in Montreux, Switzerland both in 2002 and 2003. She has toured Germany, Italy and Japan and has performed with several jazz greats such as Joe Lovano, Kevin Mahogany, Bobby McFerrin, Tiger Okoshi and Phil Wilson while in college. In 2003 she received the DownBeat Student Award in the Jazz Soloist Category before she made the decision to move to New York and expand her musical horizons. Since then, Mamiko has performed at notable venues such as The Kitano, Blue Note NY Sunday Brunch & Late Night Groove Series, 55 Bar, Garage, Zinc Bar, The Lenox Lounge, Blues Alley (in Washington, D.C.), The Kennedy Center, Victoria Theater (at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center), The Knitting Factory, Bitter End, Joe's Pub and S.O.B.'s.
Her exposure to several different styles of music such as Latin, Gospel, Reggae, Funk and R&B is the result of her working with several Afro-Brazilian and African bands and playing Gospel in Church every Sunday morning. She has worked with Roland Alexander Quintet, Joe Ford, Valery Ponomarev Big Band & His Quintet and Afro-Brazilian groups such "Ogans", "Dende" and "Velly Bahia & Kazwa Band".
As a leader, Mamiko recorded her album, "One After Another" in 2005 and released her second album,"ORIGIN/JEWEL” in 2007 which in fact is actually the combination of two separate discs; "ORIGIN" is a collection of the Funk and Latin influences compositions and "JEWEL" contains works recorded in a more straight-ahead jazz piano trio format. Her latest album "Mother Earth" was released in 2010.
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Santi Debriano & Arkestra Bembe: Ashanti
by Jack Bowers
Panama-born bassist Santi Debriano's Arkestra Bembe is a nonet whose centerpiece is the bembe music of west Africa. During the Coronavirus pandemic, Debriano began hosting weekly bembes (musical celebrations) in the basement of his Staten Island, New York home, gradually assembling a group of musicians who would comprise the Arkestra and perform Debriano's compositions and arrangements. The result is Ashanti, an impressive studio recording whose framework is jazz but whose heart and soul are clearly in bembe. ...
read moreMamiko Watanabe at Fat Cat's, NYC
by Greg Henry Waters
Mamiko Watanabe Fat Cat Club New York City, New YorkNovember 7, 2007 Mamiko Watanabe is a wonderful jazz pianist, who is simply fun to watch in performance. She is a little woman--probably no more than 98 pounds but certainly 98 pounds of dynamite! It was Lyn Christie, a string bassist who once performed with Chick Corea, to whom I owe a phrase not afraid to be original. Mamiko is such a person. She ...
read moreMamiko Watanabe: One After Another
by Terrell Kent Holmes
With the release of One After Another, add Mamiko Watanabe to the list of talented jazz pianists that have come out of Japan in recent years. Watanabe composed all of the songs on this impressive debut and they show a strong, fully developed hard bop sensibility. Watanabe's composing MO is to start off a song with a strong theme or head, as a sort of attention-grabbing mechanism, then to pull it back to where it becomes an exploratory vehicle for ...
read more"Like the best piano trios,Watanabe’s threesome has the focus and interplay of a working band" -Jazz Inside Magazine
"Throughout Mother Earth Watanabe displays talents as a pianist, composer and arranger that makes a listener smile and shake their head with the pleasure of it all. And on this disc, the pleasures are many."-The New York City Jazz Record
“Watanabe's piano playing and leadership on both discs is deft, challenging and always solid.” - All About Jazz NY Magazine
Primary Instrument
Piano
Willing to teach
Beginner to advanced