Karin Kei Nagano
The child of two world-class musicians, pianist Karin Kei Nagano made her performance debut as a child and her first album in her mid-teens. She has been highly visible as a soloist at festivals and with major orchestras. Nagano has recorded for the Analekta and Challenge Classics labels. In 2024, she was heard with her mother, aunt, and father on a recording of double and triple concertos by Mozart and Poulenc.
Nagano was born in Berkeley, California, in 1998. Her father, third-generation Japanese American Kent Nagano, was the longtime conductor of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, and her mother, Mari Kodama, is a well-known Japanese pianist who has also been active in Europe and the U.S. Pianist Momo Kodama is her aunt. Karin Kei Nagano announced her decision to become a pianist at age three (her mother had done the same at two). Her parents tried to dissuade her from making such an early commitment, but she insisted on it and began entering youth competitions in 2007. That year, she won the top prize at the Paris International Scriabin Competition. She also made her concerto debut in 2007 with an orchestra led by the Bay Area piano pedagogue Wachtang "Botso" Korisheli. Nagano went on to win top prizes at the Berlin International Piano Competition and the Rubinstein International Piano Competition. She has mostly studied the piano privately with Elena Filonova, Germaine Mounier (in Paris), Igor Lazko, Vadim Suhanov, Alexander Paley, Vera Gornostayeva, and Collette Zerah. Nagano signed with the Analekta label and, in 2014, released an album of string quartet arrangements of Mozart piano concertos with the Cecilia String Quartet.
Nagano attended Yale University, majoring in architecture and graduating with honors. She has practiced in the field, working, among others, for the firm LemayMichaud in Montreal. In addition, Nagano acts in plays, writes them, makes films, and is an avid surfer. She speaks English, French, German, and Japanese fluently. Nagano has appeared with the Bavarian State Orchestra at the Grassau Festival, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and Toronto's Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, among other groups. She continued to record for Analekta, issuing a recording of Bach's Inventions and Sinfonias in 2017 and the recital Reincarnation in 2020. In 2024, she joined Mari and Momo Kodama, Kent Nagano, and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande for a recording of Mozart's Concerto for three pianos in F major, K. 242. ~ James Manheim, Rovi
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