Pianist Mika Sasaki is an imaginative and versatile soloist, chamber musician, and educator whose performances and teaching have taken her to the UK, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, and throughout the US. Her debut album, Obsidian: Mika Sasaki plays Clara Schumann, released on Yarlung Records in 2016, was highly acclaimed by the Online Merker as “illuminat[ing] the artistic inspiration and creative exchange between three Romantic souls,” Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. Her performances have been broadcasted live on WQXR, WFMT, KQAC, and on Radio Sweden, and she has appeared as concerto soloist with the Sinfonia of Cambridge (UK), New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, 92Y Orchestra, and more recently, with the InterSchool Symphony Orchestra of New York, performing Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto in February 2019.
Festival appearances include Music@Menlo, Tanglewood, Chigiana, pianoSonoma, Taos, Yellow Barn, Aspen, Focus!, Icicle Creek, Rushmore, Mannes Beethoven Institute, Caramoor, Shandelee, Weekend of Chamber Music, Omaha Conservatory SoundWaves, WCYO Charles Ives Music Festival, and Summer Performing Arts with Juilliard in Geneva, Switzerland. She is the pianist of Ensemble Mélange and frequently concertizes with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble in Boston, the Manhattan Chamber Players, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, and with her duo partners. She is an alumna of the Peabody Conservatory, The Juilliard School, and Ensemble Connect—a two-year fellowship program of Carnegie Hall, Juilliard, and the Weill Institute, in partnership with the NYC Department of Education. Upon completing her doctorate at Juilliard, Dr Sasaki was a two-year recipient of the Juilliard Career Advancement Fellowship as a graduate who demonstrated outstanding artistry and achievement in leadership, entrepreneurship, and breadth of engagement.
Based in New York City, Dr Sasaki is a faculty member at The Juilliard School, where she teaches piano, chamber music, and keyboard skills courses in the Evening Division, and Piano Topics and keyboard skills for pianists in the College Division. In the 2021-22 academic year, she will be Acting Supervisor of Secondary Piano in the College Division. When not at the piano, she can be found tending to her houseplants, hiking, or chasing after her cat. mikasasaki.com