Mamiko Watanabe

Mamiko Watanabe is a Japanese-born pianist and composer based in New York, whose playing sits in a hard-swinging post-bop tradition that critics have compared to McCoy Tyner. Born in Fukuoka, she won a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in 1999, where she studied jazz piano, improvisation and composition, and reached the semi-finals of the Montreux Jazz Festival solo piano competition in 2002 and 2003. She took the DownBeat Student Award in the jazz soloist category in 2003 and moved to New York that same year. Her albums as a leader include One After Another (2005), Origin/Jewel (2007), Mother Earth (2010) and Flying Without Wings (2018). She has performed at Blue Note New York, Dizzy's Club and the Kennedy Center, toured Europe and Japan, and worked alongside Joe Lovano, Bobby McFerrin and Kevin Mahogany.