Biography
A virtuoso on the shakuhachi, the traditional Japanese bamboo flute, new age musician Kazu Matsui entered the world in Tokyo on June 5, 1954. During the mid-1970s he journeyed across Europe and India before enrolling in ethnic arts studies at UCLA, after which he headed back to Tokyo and took up a post teaching Educational Theories at Toyoeiwa Woman's University. While maintaining that academic role he launched his recording career, sitting in on Danny O'Keefe's 1979 LP The Global Blues and later contributing to Ry Cooder's 1982 release Slide Area and Joni Mitchell's 1985 album Dog Eat Dog. He also supplied music for several major Hollywood productions, among them Willow, Legends of the Fall, and Jumanji, and simultaneously produced sessions for his wife, keyboardist Keiko Matsui. Matsui's first solo outing, Sign of the Snow Crane, appeared in 1989, followed by Wind in 1995, Tribal Mozart in 1997, and the 1999 sequel Tribal Schubert. The atmospheric Bamboo reached listeners in 2002, and Stone Monkey arrived three years afterward, blending his shakuhachi lines with breakbeats. In 2006 the Kazu Matsui Project, his side group, issued another album titled Pioneer.
Albums
