Born in 1969 in Nagasaki, Yasuko Yamaguchi studied composition at Tokyo University of the Arts and then with Manfred Trojahn at Düsseldorf’s Robert Schumann Hochschule, earning her Master’s in 2000.  Her numerous awards include the 2005 Young Musicians Prize of the city of Düsseldorf, and her orchestral work “Darumasan ga koronda” (“Daruma fell down”) was nominated for the tenth Akutagawa Prize in Japan and performed by the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, as well as by the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa under Hiroyuki Iwaki, who recorded it for Warner Music Japan.  Ms. Yamaguchi’s work for toy pianos, “Satou no ame” (“Sugar Rain”), was included on the recent CD “The Untempered Piano: New Compositions for Toy Piano”.  Her works have been performed extensively by leading new music ensembles and heard at such international festivals as Holland’s International Gaudeamus Music Week and the Munich Biennale Klangspuren.  She has recently had two concerts of chamber music dedicated solely to her work: in Dortmund in May 2007, and in Düsseldorf in September 2008.
Web: http://www.21cmediagroup.com/mediacenter/newsitem.php?i=342