Koh

Koh was born 1979 as Koh Otera in Tokyo, Japan. At the age of 4 she started taking piano lessons. In 1992 she began studying the piano under Fumiko Yoshida (associate professor of Kunitachi College of Music) and Grete Dichler (professor of University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria), and from 1998 onward Koh began performing in public. Koh gratuated in 2002 from Kunitachi College of Music, and participated at various music festivals, and in 2004 she played together with Satoko Fujii and invited Ted Reichman to record in New York. Continue reading

Koh | Natsuki Tamura | Masahiro Uemura | Nankoh Kumon | Do-Chū | Koya Records

KOH (Koh Otera) began her musical career with the help of composer and pianist Satoko Fujii, who produced and played on the Japanese vocalist, pianist and composer’s spare and promising debut, Yamabuki (Libra, 2005). A unique vocalist and pianist, with a rare sensitivity to poetic texts that are the basis for her playful compositions, KOH proves—six years later, with two completely different releases—why Fujii trusted her talent. On both sets she collaborates with drummer Masahiro Uemura, known for his association with sound sculptor Otomo Yoshihide’s outfits and the Shibusa Shirazu Orchestra. — Eyal Hareuveni Continue reading

Koh | Masahiro Uemura | Komado-No-Oh | Tension | Koya Records

Tension is the debut from Komano-No-Oh the duo of KOH and drummer Uemura, who began to perform under this name in 2009. A sense of playfulness is stressed here, and Uemura has much more freedom, in this context, to interpret KOH’s dream-like poems with changing pulses and a wider palette of colors. He mirrors the often cryptic lyrics with healthy doses of fun, either challenging the dramatic delivery or simply injecting a surprising, aggressive shuffle drumming in the middle of an abstract reciting of a poem, as on “A Spider and a Flower.” — Eyal Hareuveni Continue reading