Nominated for the German Jazz Award 2026
Masako Ohta – Foto © Eva Marlene Etzel
“Masako Ohta is a poet of the piano” (Münchner Feuilleton)
The Japanese pianist, sound performer, and composer Masako Ohta makes music without boundaries, interdisciplinarily and internationally. She enjoys improvising, interpreting, and communicating on keyboard instruments in many collaborations. In 2022 the album “Mmmmh” was released together with trumpeter Matthias Lindermayr on the Squama label. The album was nominated for the German Jazz Prize 2023. The duo’s second album “Nozomi” (2025) received the German Record Critics’ Award. Her piano solo albums “Poetry Album” (2018), “My Japanese Heart” (2020, nominated for the German Record Critics’ Award 2020), and “My Music Garden” (2025) were released on the Winter & Winter label. Masako Ohta has received numerous music and cultural awards, including the Music Advancement Award of the City of Munich 2018/2019. She completed her piano studies in Tokyo and Berlin and has lived in Munich since 1988.
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Masako Ohta – My Music Garden © Winter & Winter GmbH
Masako Ohta chooses a haiku by Matsuo Basho as the motto for her musical garden: For a while moonlit night over flowers. Ohta opens with "In a landscape" by John Cage and leads over to "Clair de lune" by Claude Debussy with the Intermezzo, Nº 2, A major by Johannes Brahms. Pattern B "Yabe" from Patterns of Plants by Japanese composer Mamoru Fujieda is just as much a part of her journey into the infinite nature of sounds as Fumio Yasuda's "Rain Forrest" and "Souvenir from Japan, Sakura for Piano" by Toshio Hosokawa. Masako Ohta combines classical music from Schubert, Mozart, Chopin and Zimmermann with contemporary Japanese sounds to create a poetic work of fine and sensitive timbres. With "My Music Garten", Masako Ohta releases her third piano solo album on Winter & Winter. For the recordings, Ohta retreated to a solitary forest house in the Bavarian Forest, far away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, to be inspired by silence and nature. This album is the result of her intensive study of poetry, sound and music from her native Japan and her adopted home in the West. Masako Ohta lives in Munich and performs all over the world, often in collaboration with actors, dancers, poets and visual artists.
Informationen: "My Music Garden" (deutsch)
information: "My Music Garden" (english)