RISA TAKEDA

Risa Takeda biography
Risa Takeda is a Japanese keyboard player and occasional percussionist. Originally hailing from the city of Iwamizawa on Hokkaido, she started playing piano at age 3 before moving to her current residence of Tokyo in 2011, where she involved herself in the local experimental and improvisational jazz and rock scenes. Over the next years she played as part of several multi-genre formations (including the freewheeling fusion collective Musqis, jazz-infused post-rock group TCS, improvisational space rock band Scatter Electrons and free jazz trio Apostrophe), culminating in her participation in a performance of John Zorn's Cobra in 2014. Two years later she had begun making solo appearances on stage and made a name for herself for her piano arrangements of the music of Frank Zappa, and for her unconventional improvisation style, uncompromisingly noisy timbres and psychedelic visual accompaniments to her shows.

Takeda's first two solo albums, Pandora and Meteôros, were released on My Best! Records in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Both albums were composed, arranged and performed entirely by herself and demonstrated a lively mixture of her avant-garde improvisations, the familiar sounds of Canterbury prog and the modern sound of nu jazz. Her star made another notable rise in 2021 when she started a series of fruitful live collaborations with the godfather of Japanese brutal prog Tatsuya Yoshida. The two have since gone on to release an extensive string of fully improvised live albums and have also performed alongside many other familiar names from the prog and avant-jazz spheres including Mani Neumeier, Natsuki Kido and Akira Sakata. Two more full-length studio albums have since followed, namely 2022's The Sorcerer's Castle, which saw her delving into classical crossover music, and 2024's Parallel World, which incorporated elements of glitch pop, digital fusion and J-rock into her box of musical tricks.