Matsui Kazu - The International Shakuhachi Society

Matsui Kazu

松居和

Born 1954

Kazu was born in Tokyo, Japan on the 5th of June, 1954. He was a very active boy and a part-time mean boy to some girls. He hated girls who stood for the justice in school, but he admired them in his heart. He is the son of a children's book publishers, therefore he read a lot of children's literature which still influences his way of thinking even now. He was a very good baseball player in junior high (pitcher).

He travelled in India and Europe for two years when he was 20 years old, and once drove a car from London to India. Living in the countryside in India taught him many things, especially the value of human life. He came to the U.S. wanting to become a fiction writer. He graduated from UCLA majoring in ethnic arts.

Kazu played shakuhachi (a Japanese traditional bamboo flute) for many motion picture scores such as Jumanji, Legends of the Fall, Willow, Empire of the Sun, Another 48 Hours, Iceman, Red Heat, Thunderheart and others. He has produced all the albums for his wife Keiko.

When not working in the studio, Kazu teaches Educational Theories in the Toyoeiwa Woman's University in Tokyo. Every year about 900 students study with him to become pre-school teachers. Their serious and sincere attitudes towards life give him spiritual motivation. He talks about the relationship between school education and home education in many lectures to teachers and parents and also on National TV in Japan. And, he is a father!

His favorite musicians in Junior High were Harry Belafonte, Yves Montand, and Pink Floyd. His favorite writers were Ernest Hemingway, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and J R R Tolkin.

Albums

	Bamboo (Matsui)
	Is That the Way to Your Heart
	Sign of the Snow Crane
	Standing in the Wings
	Standing on the Outside
	The Direction - West
	Time No Longer
	Tribal Beethoven
	Tribal Mozart Shakuhachi and piano in a classics vein.
	Tribal Schubert Shakuhachi and piano in a classics vein.
	Wheels of the Sun Shakuhachi rock and jazz.
	Wind, The Original compositions for shakuhachi.
	Winter Blue

Tracks Recorded

Pieces	Length	Album	Instrument
Desert, The	05'19	Sign of the Snow Crane	Shakuhachi
Dream Walk, The	05'23	Sign of the Snow Crane	Shakuhachi
Farther On	05'54	Sign of the Snow Crane	Shakuhachi
Love on the Moon	04'40	Sign of the Snow Crane	Shakuhachi
Morning Mist Across the Sea	04'59	Sign of the Snow Crane	Shakuhachi
Sign of the Snow Crane	04'46	Sign of the Snow Crane	Shakuhachi
Snow Dance, The	03'15	Sign of the Snow Crane	Shakuhachi
That Empty Sky	04'07	Sign of the Snow Crane	Shakuhachi
Turtles in the Rain Forest	05'02	Sign of the Snow Crane	Shakuhachi