Asako HIRABAYASHI is recognized internationally as both a masterful composer and gifted harpsichordist. Recently, at the sixth Mae and Irving Jurow International Harpsichord Competition, held at the University of North Texas in March 2007,  contestants competed in performances of Dr. Hirabayashi's  composition "Sonatina No. 2 for Harpsichord".   Dr. Hirabayashi won First Prize with this piece in the 2004 Aliénor International Harpsichord Composition Competition. Featured also as a guest performer at the Texas event, Dr. Hirabayashi premiered her latest work for violin and harpsichord, soon to be published by Tundradogs Music Publishing.

Asako Hirabayashi earned her bachelor and master degrees in composition at the Aichi Art University in Japan, and was awarded the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in harpsichord performance from the Juilliard School (1998). Her harpsichord teachers include Lionel Party, Albert Fuller, Edward Parmentier, and Eiji Hashimoto.

She has been awarded numerous grants and scholarships. Recently she was chosen as a finalist for a McKnight Foundation grant.

After her Carnegie Hall debut in 1996, the result of winning a Special Presentation Award, the New York Concert Review described her as, “a gifted harpsichordist with genuine … refined sensibilities for phrasing, dynamic gradations and nuanced tonal beauty.” The Music Connoisseur magazine reviewed her as "an impressive talent, brilliant".

Some of her other scholarships and awards include:

• International performance awards from the Fund for U.S. artists at international  festivals and
  exhibitions in 1999 and 1996

• Foreign Study and research award, the Government of Japan in 1995.

• Winner, Special Presentation Award Auditions, New York

• Japanese Student Scholarship from The Juilliard School in 1992.

• Aaron and Irene Diamond Scholarship from The Juilliard School in 1991.

• Graduate Scholarship from University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music in 1987.

• First Prize, composition competition sponsored by Japanese national television, NHK in 1983.

• Top Honors from Aichi Art University, Japan.

Dr. Hirabayashi has performed throughout the United States, Japan, and Europe. She has appeared as a soloist in the International Bach Festival in Sumy, Ukraine, in the International Contemporary Music Festival Contest in L'vov, Ukraine, as well as in the Festival Musicale delle Nazioni in Rome, Italy. She also gave a solo recital at the Palais du Pharo, Marseille, France, sponsored by the Consulate General of Japan. Domestically, she has appeared as a soloist in the Ars Viva III Series at Goucher College in Maryland, the Music at the Main Concert Series at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, and at the University Club of Minnesota. Her performances have been broadcast on New York radio station WBI, Cincinnati radio station WGUC, Ukrainian national Television and Ukrainian National Radio. She has also performed on WCCO TV.

Dr. Hirabayashi has taught classes in music theory and literature at Aichi Gakusen University and at Ichimura College in Japan, as well as at the Juilliard School in New York. She has given lecture recitals at the Juilliard School, Miami University, the University of Kentucky, Northern Kentucky University, the University of Minnesota, and the International Bach Festival in Sumy, Ukraine. She has given master classes at the Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music in Kiev, Sumy Conservatory in Ukraine, and Northern Kentucky University.

Currently residing in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, Dr. Hirabayashi maintains a busy schedule in music. She regularly plays harpsichord along with violinist Yuko Heberlein, in their "Duo Libero". Often featured as a performer on concert series at the Schubert Club in St. Paul, Dr. Hirabayashi currently serves as the Director of the 2007 Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society Convention’s annual meeting, an action packed 2 ½ day event consisting of concerts, workshops, master classes, scholarly presentations, and exhibits of instruments by contemporary and historical builders, and hosted by the Schubert Club.

With the recent publication of two of her works for violin and harpsichord, Vocalise and Fandango, Tundradogs Music welcomes Asako Hirabayashi to the Tundradogs family. Her music is fresh and alive. She skillfully utilizes contemporary composition techniques such as polytonality, clusters, etc. with a masterful control of rhythm and texture, tension and release, to create her music and express the mood.

Publications:

*Hirabayashi, A, (2007?) "New Interpretation of Ornament signs in Elizabethan Virginal music". Early Keyboard Journal. Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society & Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society.- submitted and accepted in 2006.
*Hirabayashi, A. (2005). Sonatina II for solo harpsichord. Skyline publication, Inc., WI,   USA
*Hirabayashi, A. (2000).  The authority of the Bevin table in the interpretation of ornament signs in Elizabethan Virginal music.  Harpsichord & Fortepiano, Ruxbury Publications Ltd, Lincoln, UK
 

Reviews

Review of New York debut recital (Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall), The Music Connoisseur, Volume 4,
Number 2, 1996:

"With poise, grace and a delicate touch, this ex-pianist made her New York debut recital as harpsichordist.  ... she was on top of both her technique and her audience. She obviously knows her standard repertory well and proved this ... she was convincingly articulate in the modern works including Lewis' ultimately demanding and thorny three-movement work.  Ms. Hirabayashi's musical talents are impressive."

Review of New York debut recital (Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall), The New York Concert Review, Summer 1996:

"gifted young musician ... a harpsichordist with genuine ... sensibilities for phrasing, dynamic gradations and even nuanced tonal beauty.  Ms. Hirabayashi treats both music and instrument with refined sensibilities.  There was sophisticated stylistic differentiation between the ornament-laden traceries of Anglebert ... and the J. S. Bach.  Her animated, civilized, basically unrhetorical reading of the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue reminded me of Walter Geiseking's outstanding piano performance of the work.  Ms. Hirabayashi's way with Scarlatti was [a] bejeweled approach ... phrases gave the impression of ending with a diminuendo (though this is supposed to be impossible to achieve on the harpsichord)."

Review of recording, The Music Connoisseur, Volume 3, Number 2, 1995:

"Robert Martin had the Juilliard School make a live recording of his Harpsichord Book (1974), played by Asako Hirabayashi at Paul Hall on February 20th.  Ms. Hirabayashi's performance of this technically demanding and heady work was brilliant."