Chihiro Yamanaka
Chihiro Yamanaka is a Japanese jazz pianist and composer, born in Kiryū, Gunma Prefecture. As of 2025, she was based in Tokyo. She has released more than 20 albums, most of them on Verve Records.
Career
Yamanaka studied at the Berklee College of Music and is an alumna of Betty Carter's Jazz Ahead residency program at the Kennedy Center. She has played and recorded with the New York-based DIVA Jazz Orchestra, led by Sherrie Maricle, but is best known for her small group recordings, which are typically trios and have featured bassists such as Larry Grenadier and Robert Hurst, and drummers such as Jeff Ballard and Jeff "Tain" Watts.Yamanaka has toured in Europe, the United States and Japan, and has played at several festivals, including the Umbria Jazz Festival in 2011 and Reminiscence, were given four-star ratings by AllMusic reviewers, the review of the latter concluding with, "Yamanaka is a fierce talent with robust chops, plenty of soul, and a seemingly endless imagination for the musical possibilities of the piano trio".
Yamanaka is one of the 'Frontier Ambassadors' for Kōriyama City.
Playing style
John Fordham commented in 2016 that Yamanaka played, in the nature of Oscar Peterson, "straightahead classic jazz with the kind of showboating virtuosity that makes listeners doubt their senses". "Like Peterson, Yamanaka favours opening a song at a quiet, lounge-jazz sway and winding it up to a sprint just as listeners are settling back in their chairs."Discography
Others
With Sherrie Maricle & The Diva Jazz OrchestraA Tommy Newsom TributeWith Marlene VerPlanck
- ''It's How You Play the Game''