Keiko Fujiie facts for kids

Keiko Fujiie (Japanese: 藤家渓子) is a talented composer from Japan, born in Kyoto in 1963. Her music is played often, both in Japan and all around the world. She is especially known for her amazing guitar compositions. Many of these pieces were written for her husband, the famous Japanese guitarist Kazuhito Yamashita. Keiko Fujiie also helps organize the guitar group that carries his name. She has won a very important award called the Otaka Prize twice!

Her Musical Journey

Keiko Fujiie studied music at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where she also completed her advanced studies. In 1992-1993, she lived in New York for several months with help from the Asian Cultural Council. She went back to New York in 1998 to show her new work, "In Their Shoes," which combined music and dance.

From 1998 to 1999, she was the main composer for the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa. This means she wrote music especially for them. She has also been asked to write music for many special events. For example, she wrote "Academic Festival Overture" for Kyoto University's 100th birthday. She also composed "Kyoto: Reverberation" in 1997 for the Kyoto Protocol Treaty, which was about protecting the environment. In 2001, her "Piano Concerto No.1 'Memories of January'" was written for the 70th anniversary of the Japan Music Competition.

Keiko Fujiie was even asked to write a required piece for a big organ competition in 2004. Later, in 2006, she wrote "At the Tomb of Fra Angelico" for organ and orchestra, which was played by the winner of that same competition. Her "Guitar Concerto No.3 'Autumn Reverie'" was first performed in Seoul in 2011.

The Kazuhito Yamashita Family Quintet

Since 2001, a big part of Keiko Fujiie's work has been organizing the Kazuhito Yamashita Family Quintet. She also writes music especially for this group. The quintet often plays a piece called Kasane. This piece shows the style of music from a long time ago.

This group wants to bring back old musical traditions from both Europe and Japan. These traditions were very important in the past, and you can still hear their influence in old stories like the Japanese 11th-century novel The Tale of Genji. In Kasane, four guitars play together, creating many layers of sound with changing tones. This represents the different string instruments used in ancient Japan.

The quintet has also performed other special pieces written for them. These include A Cantastoria of One Thousand and One Nights for five guitars, and Suicho-Tsushimanoraku for three guitars, voices, and even stones! There's also a very special piece with a long name: Morokoshi ni tsukawasu tsukai no fune Naniwa yori izuru toki haha ga ko ni okureru uta. This piece uses a singer, five guitars, and Japanese Bugaku dance. It's based on a poem sung by the mother of a sailor. Her son was leaving Japan on a ship for a mission to Tang dynasty China in 733 AD. She wrote the poem as she watched him leave from Naniwa-kyō port. In the poem, she asks a group of cranes flying by to help keep her son warm whenever there was frost on the ground.

Keiko Fujiie has made three CDs with the Kazuhito Yamashita Family Quintet. They have also been invited to many music festivals around the world. Some of these include the Rome International Guitar Festival in 2004, the Cordoba Guitar Festival in 2007 and 2011, and the Open Guitar Festival in the Czech Republic in 2011. Keiko also writes music for orchestras and choirs, and she has created chamber music (for small groups of instruments) and opera. She is also very interested in Gagaku, which is ancient Japanese court music. She studies this music and writes new pieces for these special instruments.

Awards and Achievements

In 1996, Keiko Fujiie received the Kenzo Nakajima Award for her opera called "Nina de Cera." She is one of the very few Japanese composers who has won the Otaka Prize twice. This award is given by the NHK Symphony Orchestra for the best composition of the previous year. She won it in 1995 for "Beber" (for orchestra) and again in 2000 for her "Guitar Concerto No. 2 'Koisucho'."

Her Compositions

Keiko Fujiie is most famous for her guitar music. Many of her pieces were written for the Japanese guitarist Kazuhito Yamashita. Here are some of her selected works:

Her music has also been recorded and released on CDs, including:

• La Casa (works for solo guitar) Audio CD (December 1, 1997) Solea Group/Sugo Music courtesy of Yamashita Kazuhito Jimusho Co., Ltd., ASIN: B002NILJZC
• Little Girls' Beautiful Lives Solea Group