Yumi Saiki, composer

Born in 1964, Yumi Saiki graduated from Aichi Prefectural University of Arts and Music. After graduating from Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris in 1991, she joined Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris the same year, where she graduated with top honors of Premier prix à Premier nommé in 1995. In 2005, she pursued further research into electronic music and composition at IRCAM in Paris.
Saiki has been the recipient of several prizes, including the second prize in the Music Competition of Japan in 1993 and the Akutagawa Award for Music Composition in 2005. She has also been commissioned by various groups including Music Tomorrow, Music From Japan, Suntory Foundation for Arts, and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as several renowned performing artists. Her major works have been performed by leading orchestras such as NHK Symphony Orchestra, and Ensemble L'itinéraire, Alter Ego, and Tokyo Sinfonietta in music festivals and concerts in Darmstadt, Caen, Gaudeamus, Yogyakarta, Tegu, Seoul, and Takefu.  In 2014, a concert of Saiki’s chamber works were presented at Gifu Collection of Modern Arts. Her two CDs, Confessionand Entomophonie, were released by ALM-RECORDS and Fontec, respectively, in 2014. Both were special picks of The Record Geijutsu and recommended discs of The Asahi Shimbun.
Two series of works central to her oeuvre, Song of Insects and Metamorphoses examine questions of time structure in new music. In recent years, she has attempted to create work using religious subjects or events unrelated to music. Saiki gave a presentation of her works at Suntory Hall in November 2018. The concert include a new orchestral commission as part of “Composer’s Profile II 2018”, and also, she gave "a portrait concert" in March 2019 in New York as the Residence Artist of Music From Japan Festival.  She is currently a member of the faculty at Tokyo University of the Arts and Kunitachi College of music as well as its graduate school.
Saiki belongs to The Japan Society for Contemporary Music,  The Japan Federation of Composers Inc, Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and publishers, and  Ensemble Contemporary α.

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