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Izumi Kimura
Pianist Izumi Kimura explores between abstract and concrete, improvising and composing. She has performed extensively throughout Ireland and abroad since moving from Japan in 1995, and worked with some of the leading performers and ensembles from both disciplines of classical, jazz and improvised music, including RTE Symphony Orchestra, RTE Concert Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Michael d’Arcy, Mia Cooper, Ken Edge, Benjamin Dwyer, Gerald Barry, John Buckley, Kevin O’Connell, Ian Wilson, Fergus Johnston from the world of classical music, and with jazz and improvising musicians including Barry Guy, Gerry Hemingway, Tommy Halferty, Ronan Guilfoyle, Michael Buckley, Joe O’Callaghan, Oki Itaru, Dominique Pifarély, Benoît Delbecq, Stéphane Payen, Marco Colonna, Sarah Buechi, Lina Andonovska, Mathew Jacobson, Nick Roth, Colm O’Hara, Cora Venus Lunny. She has appeared in the festivals including RTE Living Music Festival, Boyle Arts Festival, Dublin Dance Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, Bray Jazz Festival, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ghent Street Festival of New Music, Music 21’s ‘Brazil Now’, ‘Artes Da Irlanda’ in Sao Paolo, Creative Connexions in Sitges, Ad Libitum Festival in Warsaw, and many more.
Albums
Asymmetry (22 solo piano pieces by Japanese and Irish composers) 2010 Diatribe Records with funding from the Art Council Music Recording Scheme, managed by Music Network.
Maelstrom (with Tommy Halferty) 2016 Self Release
Illuminated Silence (with Barry Guy and Gerry Hemingway) 2019 Fundacja Słuchaj
Silent Tree (with Sankhara - Joe O’Callaghan and Derek Whyte)
Folding (with Anthony Kelly and Cora Venus Lunny) 2021 Farpoint Recordings
Invisible Resistances (with Cora Venus Lunny) 2022 Farpoint Recordings
Kind of Light (with Artur Majewski, Barry Guy and Ramon Lopez) 2022 Fundacja Słuchaj Kind of Shadow (with Artur Majewski, Barry Guy and Ramon Lopez) 2023 Fundacja Słuchaj Upcoming
Kairos (with Gerry Hemingway) 2023 Fundacja Słuchaj
Adaptation (with Joe O’Callaghan - Ian Wilson, compositon) 2000
Mixed Circuits (David Bremner, compositon) 2022 Farpoint Recordings
Tags
Gerry Hemingway with Izumi Kimura, Frank Gratkowski and Christian Weber: Live at Bau 4
by Glenn Astarita
Drummer and composer Gerry Hemingway has spent five decades proving that percussion can be as harmonically literate as any horn or keyboard. That reputation was forged during his decade with the Anthony Braxton Quartet and expanded through an expansive discography on labels including Auricle, Tzadik, Clean Feed, and Intakt. Now based in Switzerland, Hemingway continues to cultivate collaborations that balance compositional rigor with the spontaneity of collective improvisation. Live at Bau 4 documents one such encounter. Per Maxi ...
Continue ReadingGerry Hemingway: Live at Bau 4
by Mark Corroto
Touch. It is the word that most often comes to mind when listening to the music of composer and drummer Gerry Hemingway. While rhythm and structure are central to his work, it is touch, the physical act of striking, rubbing, bowing, pressing and releasing that gives his music its distinctive character. Hemingway's performances do more than generate sound; they evoke texture. They invite the listener to imagine the grain of wood, the scrape of metal, the vibration of strings and ...
Continue ReadingIan Patterson's Best Jazz Albums Of 2025
by Ian Patterson
The number of albums released year upon year seems to grow exponentially, with self-released albums increasingly the norm. Much of the most interesting and courageous modern jazz is released on small, independent labels where artistic value and not commercial potential is the principal driving force. The challenge for these free spirits is to get their music heard--not always an easy task in a flooded market and a competitive world. Still quality music will always find an appreciative audience. This list ...
Continue ReadingDreams And Dust: Two From Pianist Izumi Kimura
by Ian Patterson
2025 will go down as a busy year for Ireland-based, Japanese pianist Izumi Kimura. The first half of the year served up the solo album Butterfly Effect (Codama Records) and Glacial Voyage (Between The Lines)--the latter a free-form duo collaboration with guitarist Christy Doran. Both albums favored explorations of mood and textures over virtuosity. Two further collaborative albums once again find Kimura on improvisational terrain, though they are quite different in character. Taken together, these albums are windows onto Kimura ...
Continue ReadingChristy Doran & Izumi Kimura: Glacial Voyage
by Ian Patterson
One was born in Ireland in the aftermath of WWII and grew up in Switzerland on a diet of Jimi Hendrix; the other was born in Japan a generation later and trained in classical music. But neither time nor musical upbringing can drive a wedge between veteran guitarist Christy Doran and pianist Izumi Kimura. Though each has worked in a wide range of different settings over the years--Doran in jazz-rock pioneers OM, Kimura with John Cage's music, for example--what draws ...
Continue ReadingIzumi Kimura: Butterfly Effect
by Ian Patterson
Japanese pianist Izumi Kimura has earned plaudits through her various improvisation-based projects with double bassist Barry Guy, percussionist Gerry Hemingway, and guitarists Christy Doran and Tommy Halferty, to cite just a few of her principal collaborators. But Kimura, a long-term resident in Ireland, is equally compelling when going it alone. Over the years, she has clocked up many a solo concert, but Butterfly Effect marks only the second solo recording in her increasingly impressive discography. It comes fifteen ...
Continue ReadingIzumi Kimura / Barry Guy / Gerry Hemingway: Six Hands Open As One
by John Sharpe
Although dating back to at least Aesop's fables written in 500 BC, the saying that you can know someone by the company they keep remains as true as ever. While Irish-based Japanese pianist Izumi Kimura is the nominal leader, the egalitarian trio on Six Hands Open As One finds her in illustrious company. Bassist Barry Guy and drummer Gerry Hemingway have both led storied careers which defy concise summation, but Guy's affinity for the format is worth ...
Continue Reading"A fearless explorer of the contemporary music landscape ... Kimura brings a combination of feral creativity and technical virtuosity to the stage that belies her calm demeanour" The Irish Times
"Meditative, subtly provocative, impressionistic and consistently alluring"
"Music unfolded as a journey of constant revelations" All About Jazz
Kimura, Lunny and Kelly: Folding review – startlingly beautiful
