After graduating from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts,
Aki performs extensively as a soloist and a chamber musician both in
Japan and in Europe, especially in Italy. She won first prizes in the
1993 French Music Competition and the 1997 Contemporary Music
Competition. In 1995, she was awarded the Xavier Montsalvage Prize for
Performance of Contemporary Piano Music in Spain.

Besides the classical repertoire, Kuroda has performed pieces by many
contemporary composers, such as Ligeti, Xenakis, Donatoni, Boulez,
Campo, Mochizuki and Takemitsu. In 2003 she gave a brilliant
performance in the Teatro Regio di Parma, playing Mussorgsky’s
Pictures at an Exhibition and a composition dedicated to her by
Maurizio Pisati. She subsequently performed Michael Jarrell’s
Modifications at the Ticino Musica Festival. In 2004, Kuroda gave a
wonderful performance of Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie Op. 9 in its
piano solo version in Tokyo and Osaka. At present Kuroda is working
with renowned musicians such as the clarinettist Alessandro Carbonare
and the Prometheus Quartet.

She has devoted special attention to Astor Piazzolla’s works, to whom
her first solo albums are dedicated (Japan Victor). Kuroda is
acclaimed not only as a classical and contemporary music pianist, but
also as a tango and jazz music performer. Her videogame music
recording Final Fantasy X. XIII, Piano Collection has been universally
praised. In 2004, she released the album Tarkus and Pictures at an
Exhibition, dedicated to the works of Keith Emerson. In 2008, she
performed Sylvano Bussotti’s new composition The Poetic Keyboard at
the Cagliari Spaziomusica Festival.

Aki Kuroda’s 2014 disc ‘Firebird’, released by the Ordradek label, has
also earned her considerable critical acclaim, receiving 5 stars from
the BBC Music Magazine among various other distinctions. Kuroda is
also a member of the Tokyo Gen’On project and the commission of the
Piano Teachers’ National Association of Japan (PTNA).