Over the course of a career that has spanned more than four decades Akiko Yano has straddled genres ranging from disco to electronic to funk to new wave to synthpop, but it's for jazz-styled j-pop that she is perhaps best-known. Her sense of whimsy and mischief have seen her compared to Kate Bush.
Born Akiko Suzuki in 1955, Yano got her start in music studying jazz piano in high school and by 1976 she had recorded her first album, 'Japanese Girl', in Los Angeles with Lowell George and Little Feat.
She was briefly married to Makoto Yano, the producer on 'Japanese Girl', but the relationship didn't last and she went on to marry Yellow Magic Orchestra's Ryuichi Sakamoto. That partnership saw Yano touring internationally with the group in the early '80s, allowing her to begin building a following of her own in the US. She played on America's west coast, supported by Little Feat, and recorded with British rock group Japan, helping cement her reputation in the West.
After Yano separated from Sakamoto in the 1990s, she moved to New York, which has served as her base ever since. In the decades that have followed Yano has collaborated with Will Lee and Chris Parker in the Akiko Yano Trio, recorded with electronic musician Rei Harakami as a member of yanokami and worked with Studio Ghibli. As of 2019 she has released some 27 solo studio albums as well as numerous live recordings and compilations.
