Awa Duo

Yuka Takechi has forged a unique career as a Japanese composer at the highest level.

Her compositional repertoire is wide, comprising orchestral, chamber, choral and traditional Japanese works. Her compositions are based on cognition of time and space, and transforming elements from within genres of Japanese traditional music such as Shomyo, Gagaku and Noh. Her work is highly acclaimed, especially on account of its refined and sonorous colour palette.

Her works have been performed throughout Europe, Japan, the USA and Russia at festivals such as the International Zagreb Music Biennale and the Tanglewood Music Festival. Leading orchestras and musicians – including the London Sinfonietta, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, New Juilliard Ensemble, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo City Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic and Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra – have performed her compositions.

​Takechi's music incorporating Japanese traditional instruments has been performed by leading exponents Mayumi Miyata, Sukeyasu Shiba, Yoko Nishi and Hidejiro Honjo, at venues including the National Theatre in Tokyo and Carnegie Hall.

She has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes in Japan, including the Kanagawa Cultural Prize in 2009 for her orchestral work Eaux Lumières Temps, conducted by Seikyo Kim. The work was runner-up at the NHK Symphony Orchestra’s Otaka Prize in 2010. She received the 2007 Japan Contemporary Art Encouragement Prize for the large-scale ritualistic work Saigyo Mandala for Gagaku and Shomyo, commissioned by the International Kanagawa Arts Festival.

Takechi received her BMus and MMus in composition with first-class honours at the Tokyo University of Arts and Music (Geidai), studying under Jō Kondō and Yoritsune Matsudaira. She was an arts fellow at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in the USA, where she studied and collaborated with architect Arata Isozaki and Yuji Takahashi, a composition fellow at the Tanglewood Music Festival under George Benjamin in 2003, and a selected research composer at IRCAM in 2005, coached by Philippe Schoeller. She received her PhD at the Royal Academy of Music in 2010, supervised by Simon Bainbridge.

During her years at the Academy, she also studied at The Juilliard School, where she had lessons with Milton Babbitt. She was an Artist of Agency for Cultural Affairs overseas by the Japanese Government and her awards include the Nomura Cultural Award. Forthcoming engagements include a commission from Keiko Urushihara and Kiyoshi Somura.

Takechi taught composition and music theory as a Research Associate Professor at Wakayama University and as an invited Lecture at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama from 2012-14, as well as at Tokyo University of Arts. She was an invited composer and chair at the New York Summit organised by Columbia University in 2013.