How did you come to know the name “Misaki Umei”? Perhaps you heard about her as a promising jazz pianist who won the Grand Prix at the audition for the “BLUE GIANT NIGHTS” event, derived from the popular jazz manga “BLUE GIANT SUPREME,” during high school. She went on to perform alongside Hiromi Uehara and Kendrick Scott at Blue Note Tokyo. Others may know her as the composer for the vocal unit “haruyoi,” with Shoka Sugano or for her striking solo work under her own name, such as the latest track “w_mimoza,” featuring classical strings arrangements and a seven-minute development. Each of these roles forms a vital part of Misaki Umei as a musician. Continually seeking the unknown, she explores emotions that words cannot fully express, continuing her musical journey. Born in March 2002, she is currently 22 years old and shared her journey so far as a talent poised to lead the next generation.
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Expressing Emotions Through Music
-You are from Kakogawa City in Hyogo Prefecture and started playing the piano at the age of four, influenced by your mother who was a piano teacher. You began composing music at the age of six.
Umei: I have always loved improvisation, and I remember that this led me to composing. I was not good at playing according to the score, and my teacher used to get angry at me, saying, “You’re composing on your own again! [laughs]. I was more interested in creating my own compositions than playing according to the score, and I don’t think that attitude has changed.
-Why do you think you enjoy creating?
Umei: It’s the same now, but I’m not very good at communicating with words. I used to think that if I expanded my vocabulary, things would change, but when I got to know various words, I realized that in the end, many of my thoughts and what I want to express are not applicable to words. Rather, I like the sound itself, and music has always been the closest thing to me, so I guess it felt right as an emotional expression.
Born in Kakogawa City, Hyogo Prefecture. She began playing the piano at the age of four and started composing and playing the electronic organ at six. She graduated with a major in composition from the Music Department of Nishinomiya High School and from the Composition Department of Tokyo College of Music. She was a recipient of the Yamaha Music Scholarship Support System in 2018. In January 2020, she released the Misaki Umei Trio’s first album “Humoresque” from Brilliant Works. Her activities span widely, including a successful performance at the Cotton Club with her trio, and collaborations with artists such as Hiromi Uehara, Kendrick Scott, Masaki Hayashi, Takashi Niigaki, Eiko Ishibashi, Mugi Furukawa, Mika Nakashima, Kayoko Yoshizawa, Kairi Yagi, SennaRin, Miliyah Kato, and Shinya Kiyozuka. She also participates as a pianist and arranger in live performances and recordings for various artists (names are not in order and honorifics are omitted). Additionally, she began a solo project in February 2023.
Official Website: https://linktr.ee/umeboshi3333
-Did you enjoy school, or did you prefer coming home and playing the piano by yourself?
Umei: School was fun, but I knew I didn’t have the same interests as my classmates. What was popular when I was in elementary school was AKB48 and Arashi, but what I was into was DIMENSION and Niacin [laughs]. I didn’t intentionally try to like mature things, but people around me thought I was acting mature, and we didn’t get along when we talked about music, which I remember feeling sad about.
-Did things change after you went to high school with a music program?
Umei: For the first time, I met people with whom I could have deep conversations about music. It was a classical music school, but there were kids who had been child actors with Shiki Theatre Company, kids who played jazz, and others who played the bassoon at school but had always loved singing. It was an environment with a diverse group of people, and it had a huge impact on me. I never really listened to music by genre; instead, I focused on the artist or specific parts of a song that I liked, and this fit in perfectly with the environment.
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Learning from Frank Zappa: “You Must Not Lie in Your Music”
-I think there is a general image that kids who have been playing classical piano since they were little “stick to that path,” but that was not the case with your classmates at school, nor with Umei herself.
Umei: I am a very greedy person. I have always wanted to be able to do this and that, and of course I love the piano, but that’s not enough for me. He was also an arranger, so he knew a lot about all genres of music. I was very envious of that. It was through that teacher that I started listening to Niacin and Frank Zappa.
-What did he teach you as a musician?
Umei: He let me play freely. At first, he was concerned about my interest in classical piano and popular music at the same time, but he also said that while I was playing the electone, the children who had been playing only piano were growing rapidly, and he said, “If you want to enter competitions in piano, you should focus on piano. I think it’s right to say, “If you want to enter piano competitions, you should focus on piano. However, I think it was very important that Niacin understood my personality of wanting to do whatever I wanted to do and allowed me to do whatever I wanted.
-And he taught me everything from Niacin to Frank Zappa [laughs].
Umei： In the Frank Zappa documentary film “ZAPPA” (2022), he says, “My purpose in life is to take my works home and listen to them alone. I do it for that time.” I really empathized with that. I haven’t recorded that many of my own works yet, but I am really happy to take them home and listen to them alone. I could feel from the documentary that Frank Zappa never lied about his music, and it really filled my heart with joy.
-That’s a great story. Did you also want to create and express your music without lying?
Umei: Nowadays, you can get all kinds of information through SNS. Living in such a world, I sometimes don’t know what I want to do. But when I saw Zappa’s way of life, I thought to myself, “I must never lie about my music, and I must never forget that.
