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Tempei Nakamura

tempei.jpgOverlooking the rush of cars and passersby enjoying one of the first warm days of March, Tempei Nakamura has a view of it all from his grand piano in his Harlem apartment. He chose this particular room for its view of the Victorian era mansions situated along St. Nicholas Avenue and its two large windows which allow the warm breeze of springtime to blow through the cotton curtains into the living room of his quaint, sparsely furnished one bedroom apartment. Nakamura’s piano, a futon, and a small table next to his piano are all he needs to get by. The room reflects its occupant’s life as an artist who, growing up in the mountains of Kobe, Japan, is inspired by nature and simplicity. Shoes line the apartment’s entrance – an Asian custom – the first sign of occupancy before one enters barefoot, giving the visitor an even more serene connection to the surroundings and vibrations of Nakamura’s playing which reverberate through the hardwood floors above the New York City streetscape. One word to describe Nakamura is peaceful and it is evoked in every aspect of his surroundings and his music.

Dressed in a red t-shirt and jeans with spiky hair, Nakamura appears to be stylish and comfortable in his own skin, a handsome young man you’d expect to find with the young crowd in Greenwich Village. Instead, Nakamura chooses to remain inconspicuous indoors with his music and his thoughts. There is no arrogance when he approaches the piano and plays anything requested from Chopin to Beethoven. His simple apartment uptown and his polite manners reveal that the 28-year-old virtuoso remains introspective and humble about his recent musical accomplishments in his home country. He remains dedicated to music and has admitted to not seeing a lot of New York City because he spends most of his day in his apartment playing the Yamaha piano he bought upon arriving to the United States. He’s been to Blue Note once and his favorite places in New York so far have been Riverside Park and the Hudson River. “I love the Harlem scene,” said Nakamura who had never heard of Williamsburg or the Village. A bit shy upon sitting at his piano bench, he plays for me the latest composition which will likely end up on his second album with EMI Music. He begins modestly with a several etudes before launching into a lush melody with Debussy influences, though it is hard to compare the music Nakamura’s composes. It is neither jazz nor classical. Rather, it is a fusion of traditional Japanese music that reflects the importance of silence and nature along with the classical and jazz training he received at Osaka University of Arts and later at the New York Piano Academy in Harlem, and a tinge of mainstream contemporary music such as pop, country, and rock.

One of his teachers at the New York Piano Academy, Dr. Ronn Yedidia, compared Nakamura’s playing to the great Romantic pianists Franz Lizt and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Yedidia describes Nakamura’s playing as “very heartfelt and pianistic; tonal and virtuosic”. “His music is into aesthetics and beauty. It is always consonant sounding and agreeable to the human ear.” The warmth his friends and teachers speak of comes through as harmonic passion in his compositions. Not professionally trained in music until his late teens, Nakamura plays without any music in front of him and has not yet learned to write his music out on paper for others to play. Everything from the Chopin etudes to his own music is in his head. This has not stopped him from winning awards including the Toshiba/EMI New Talent Competition in November 2006. This led to a record deal with EMI and the release of his debut album titled “Tempeizm” in June 2008 which sold twenty thousand records in Japan and invitations to appear on nearly a dozen television and radio programs. He plans to compose most of the music for his next album in the next several months by the window of his Harlem apartment before recording it this summer in Japan. Its release date is planned for November 2009. “My first album is of memories in Japan,” says Nakamura. “My second album’s concept will be New York inspired and related to my experiences here.” He plays a piece he calls Maiden Voyage which, he says, attempts to communicate through music his feelings upon arriving in New York and his optimism about his future in this new country. In between playing on the piano, he slowly reveals parts of his life and childhood. He politely offers a glass of homemade lemonade and offers a short demo album he recorded before landing his contract with EMI. A baseball bat leans against the wall of the living room. He picks it up and reveals his admiration for Japanese baseball player Ichiro Suzuki who was also the inspiration for one of the pieces on his album titled “Area 51” after Suzuki’s number.

Born the youngest of three children in a middle class home, Nakamura affectionately calls his parents warmhearted, free-spirited people who were not strict about schoolwork. He grew up in the mountainside outside of Kobe until he was eighteen. It is where he fondly recalls catching cicadas and other insects along with fishing for crabs in the river. “I loved it,” says Nakamura. “I love being in nature and playing in nature.” This love of nature also gave him a keen eye to capture beauty in natural surroundings as a photographer. His photographs of nature appear in his promotional pamphlet for his first album. Nakamura explains the story behind the pieces in his album “Tempeizm”, particularly a suite he composed titled “Echoes of Summer” which consists of five movements. The suite was composed from his memories swimming in ravines and driving through mountains with a friend. “The sun rays were sparkling,” explained Nakamura. “The solitary Shinto shrine stood tall amongst the sounds of the cicada. This memory was deeply etched into my memory.” “Tempeizm” also includes Etude C-Moll, Nakamura’s very first piano composition which plays at a rapid speed and sounds as technically difficult as Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee. “I composed this for myself to improve performance, skill and technique,” explained Nakamura who included a chromatic scale throughout. “I believe that etude pieces are effective if the technical difficulty is uniform throughout the piece. So I recomposed it numerous times to get this final piece.” The sound is nothing short of genius, especially when you realize that Nakamura doesn’t actually “compose” music on the page but in his head.

Nakamura was introduced to the piano at six-years-old and played until the age of twelve. “Nothing serious. Maybe 30 minutes each week as a hobby without any formal training,” said Nakamura nonchalantly, unaware of how incredible and rare it is for someone of his ability not to have played seriously as a child. His teen years were bleak and unproductive. He completely abandoned music studies and was kicked out of school at sixteen. He left home for Osaka and became a construction worker. Music was something that Nakamura turned to in order to turn his life around because he realized that it was his only passion and did not want to end up working in construction his entire life. He studied progressive rock at Osaka University and was influenced mainly by the English rock group Emerson, Lake, & Palmer while writing songs for band arrangements. In his second year, he heard the music of Hungarian pianist Georges Cziffra which Nakamura credits to have changed his entire life and decision to become a solo pianist and composing music that fused his passions and would produce a sound that would challenge conventional standards of classical and jazz music and would set him apart as an artist. It is this music that he would later send to EMI Music and later appear on his album. Tracks like “Fantasy” which Nakamura wanted to be free of any musical formats and rules. “It has irregular timing and a completely original style that cannot be categorized in any one specific genre”.

Wanting to study with an accomplished pianist who could teach him classical methods, Nakamura contacted Dr. Yedidia in 2006 who had established the New York Piano Academy only a year before on 105th and Amsterdam. Nakamura bought Yedidia’s album in Japan and was impressed with Yedidia’s technique and playing and wanted to come to New York to study with him. “We worked together for about a year and he didn’t need much help because he’s a pretty full artist,” said Yedidia. “All of the music is in his head which is quite amazing. He doesn’t write anything down.” The only thing problematic with this, Yedidia points out, is that other people can’t play his music. Despite this lack of development in terms of music theory and formal composition writing, Nakamura has no desire to further his formal training at a music conservatory. With a record deal and previous training at Osaka University, Nakamura could easily get into Julliard or the Manhattan School of Music but he waves off the idea that he could benefit there any more than the hours he spends playing at home. “I’m not classical and I’m not jazz” says Nakamura who doesn’t want to be categorized or identified with one genre of music. “I’m just a pianist.” He realizes his uniqueness and nontraditional music background is part of his appeal and what has set him apart so far in his career. The bad boy aspect of his life combined with his romantic ballads gives him a sort of sex appeal in Japan that allows him to appear on a variety of television and radio programs including pop stations for the MTV generation. A young female fan states that Nakamura’s sensitivity makes her feel warm and his passion and devotion to music makes her admire him as a musician. “I am a fan of his humanity,” she said. “I think Tempei san has some kind of ability to make people feel relaxed and peaceful.” It is a quality that has helped Nakamura establish friendships with influential musicians and people in the music industry and could likely help Nakamura establish himself as an international pianist in the future.

His technical ability and classical music influences are what sets him apart from simply becoming a pop star that can’t be taken seriously by classical music fans. His talent and ability to play a classic repertoire also makes Nakamura a very unique musical creature similar to the romantic composers from the 19th and early 20th century Nakamura admires them and they influence his modern pieces. “His music can get pretty complex,” said Yedidia. Nakamura’s music feeds into the Western tradition of Lizt and Chopin he has been trained in during his time at music school. “Some of his pieces can sound like Hungarian Rhapsodies. You can also hear the Japanese sound from Buddhist temples and things like that. There is a sense of natural beauty and stillness. It’s very evocative especially visually.” Haim Cotton, who taught Nakamura jazz theory at the New York Piano Academy and describes Nakamura as dignified, noble, and a pleasure to know and mentor. Cotton compares Nakamura’s ability to crossover with the likes of Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin whose ability to compose classical, jazz, and Broadway songs made them a part of mainstream popular culture. “He takes the popular music of the time and brings it to the concert hall,” said Cotton who had received Nakamura’s music in the mail and was stunned by the beauty of his compositions as well as his ability as a pianist. “His music could be a soundtrack to a movie or a song but it is compositionally structured as concert pieces for the classical concert hall. At the same time, he masters all the fundamentals of great music throughout time. He is well ingrained and grounded in classical principles.” Knowing Tempei as a friend, Cotton says that Nakamura is appreciative and humble while being such a capable virtuoso. “He’s skilled but knows that he can always learn more and appreciates good teaching. That is the mark of a good musician. In that sense he has incredible qualities.”

Despite Nakamura’s success in Japan, there are also barriers as a Japanese musician trying to break into the music industry in the United States. The only Japanese pianist who has been able to become famous in jazz is Toshiko Akiyoshi. However, friends and teachers alike agree that Nakamura has the talent and ability to pave his own path whether he wants to ultimately be branded as a jazz or classical musician. Nakamura hopes to someday release an album with EMI in the United Kingdom and the United States and is thinking about hiring a manager in the United States who will help him get music gigs in New York. But these plans have not been acted on and are not at the forefront of Nakamura’s short-term plans. Most of his energy this year is focused on creating music and producing a critically-acclaimed sophomore album he believes will ultimately help his career more than getting a few gigs at music clubs in New York. Cotton and Yedidia believe that Nakamura knows exactly what he wants to do and can succeed in the music industry through nontraditional means. “The music industry in the United States is in limbo,” says Cotton. “The traditional record deal doesn't exist anymore. If Tempei wants to make it in the business, he should market himself online and build his fan base.”

Nakamura has never taken the traditional route and it has benefited him thus far in his career. As the sun set behind the backdrop of Harlem, Nakamura said his plans for the rest of the afternoon were to practice and mentally compose music inside of his head. His humility and respect was palpable in the several hours spent in his apartment. It was a quality that was rare in a musician of his caliber and in a profession filled with large egos. “He’s just delightful in that sense,” said Cotton. “It’s almost like he approaches the piano like a ritual, from a deep place, like a servant of the music. It’s uncommon and something you don’t see a lot of. A very, very nice and modest person.” So what is Nakamura proud of the most? “My parents are very happy. I was bad growing up but they are very proud which makes me happy.”

Text: Christal Phillips

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