​Maya Kawasaki

A meta-performer who asks not merely how one performs, but what performance itself is. Through concert planning, artistic creation, piano performance, and experimental music practice, she engages in both conceptual inquiry and practical experimentation toward the relativization of the act of performance itself.

In 2024, she co-founded the collective CreativeMMCP with Shintaro Shibayama. From the perspective of reconstructing MMCP (Morphology of Musical Communication Process), a concept proposed by musicologist Susumu Shono, their practice actively traverses the three processes of composition, performance, and listening, critically reexamining the normative frameworks of Western art music. In 2024 and 2025, she conceived and produced the collective’s original project, Why Do We Not Exercise Our Freedom in Mozart’s Cadenzas?

She has also appeared in performances including TACT Festival 2022: Gathering Strange Music (presented by Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre), Ryogoku Art Festival 2024 (artistic director: Akiko Yamane), and the Promenade Concert presented by Setagaya Art Museum, expanding her activities as an experimental music performer.

Her directed work HALLELUJAH JUNCTION (2020/2021) received the Excellence Award at the Tokyo University of the Arts Art Festival 2022. She has also presented numerous performance and video works that creatively reinterpret existing experimental music pieces, including Pendulum Music, Composition 1960 #7, and Theatre Music.

She is equally committed to music education, running a private piano studio while also serving in the administration and supervision of the Music Skills Certification organized by the Japan Music Association, and as a national finals judge for the National Children’s Piano Competition.

She graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts Music High School (Piano Major) and from the Piano Department of the Faculty of Music at Tokyo University of the Arts, before completing a Master’s degree in Piano Performance at the university’s Graduate School, where she received the Doseikai Prize.

She has also made numerous media appearances, including on NHK-FM’s Kimama ni Classics Special, and was a recipient of the Yamaha Music Scholarship from 2011 to 2013.