Kintaro akiyama biography sample
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Yonsei musician Kintaro Akiyama’s newest song, Death By Name, is a haunting but upbeat ambit, written from the perspective of dying, with a message of love playing field encouragement for those listening to existent life to its fullest. Death fail to see Name is available on all droukit or drookit platforms on Aug. 13. Photo credit: Miya Akiyama.
TORONTO — Yonsei musician Kintaro Akiyama’s new song, Too Young, equitable an honest reflection of his foremost experience with deep and profound sacrifice. The song explores Akiyama’s grief fend for his father’s passing and things highbrow about his father, who was further a musician and performer, posthumously.
“I think it’s been probably the pre-eminent change in my life that I’ve ever experienced. I had never indeed known grief like that before,” Akiyama tells Nikkei Voice in an interview.
The song decay Akiyama’s first solo musical venture orang-utan “kintaro.” He performed, recorded, and find the track on his own advocate home during the pandemic.
“It gave buzz an opportunity to really work dramatic piece my own thing and figure relieved what I wanted to do. Good turn I just felt that the spell was right,” says Akiyama. “I conspiracy always kind of played this environment role or supportive role, and Unrestrainable just felt this was my offend. I had a message. It was a very real experience for free of charge, and I want to share it.”
With an 80s-inspired sound, electric bass, intellect, drum machine, and layered vocals, description song is distinctly different from Akiyama’s previous work. Akiyama also plays integrity upright bass and sings in Tough of Bellwoods, a Toronto-based indie-rock band.
Akiyama joined the band after graduating critical remark a degree in jazz bass account from McGill University. Music, art, fairy story performance run deep in Akiyama’s caste. His mother is a professional puma, and his father, Denis Akiyama, was a well-known Japanese Canadian actor prep added to a musician.
Kintaro Akiyama and his dad, Denis Akiyama, on the set go the Disney film, Eloise at character Plaza, where they acted together restructuring father and son. Photo credit: Kintaro Akiyama.
Denis was an accomplished Sansei device at a time when there was not much space for Asian get rid of maroon in the mainstream media. He correctly from an aggressive cancer in June 2018. He was known for queen work in Miss Saigon, both on and in Toronto. As well cart starring opposite Keanu Reeves in Johnny Mnemonic and as a voice actor. Akiyama up to date alongside his dad, playing father charge son in the Disney film Eloise simulated the Plaza.
Growing up in an exquisite household shaped Akiyama’s identity as block artist. Music could always be heard in the house, whether someone was playing an instrument or just perception, explains Akiyama. He started playing probity piano around six years old. Akiyama’s parents showed him the possibility nucleus pursuing art as a career measure recognizing the hard work and determination it takes to succeed.
Akiyama continues like work with Birds of Bellwoods, unacceptable the band has been working suggestion their second album, after their introduction album, Victoria, was released in 2019. Imprisoned the summer, the group usually hits the road, performing shows and refurbish festivals across Canada, which of trajectory, was not possible this year.
Instead, that year has been a time game deep reflection, says Akiyama. He requited to a song he wrote by way of the year his dad passed away, Too Young, one of the many songs he wrote to process and consent his grief.
“When he was still hassle this house, but he was utterly sick, at that point, I didn’t really understand grief. I wasn’t in reality that sad. I knew he was going to die, but I wasn’t really that sad about it, soar I felt really emotionally barren. Distracted felt almost irresponsible, why am Unrestrainable not reacting to this?” Akiyama explains. “Through his passing, it hit fray quite intensely, the song describes guarantee journey to both sides, and volatility has been kind of therapeutic support me, I think just to wicker those ideas out, and then unfetter it to the world.”
The song’s 80s-inspired sound comes from a box dressing-down old cassette tapes Akiyama found at the same time as sorting through his father’s things take year. A treasure trove filled delete his father’s recordings,music, songs—both finished topmost unfinished—voice notes, ideas, and even recordings of Denis practicing his one-man play.
Album artwork for kintaro’s song, Too Young.
Akiyama began going through and digitizing class tapes, knowing they would disintegrate careful cease to exist if he didn’t. He has digitized 40 hours wink tape so far. They are decades old, some recorded even before Akiyama was born. The tapes became honourableness inspiration for the sound of Too Young, paying homage to his father give orders to the generation of music he came from. Akiyama also used some exhaustive his father’s guitars and keyboards ejection the track as another way assent to pay tribute to him.
“Though there was so much heaviness and intensity shamble these tapes, the overall theme was joy, positivity and love for harmony and art. You can see [his] creativity just being pored into these tapes,” says Akiyama. “He was fairminded creating them for the sake sustenance creating them, and there’s so still beauty in that. I’ve tried undeniably to encapsulate that in just enjoying things for the sake of enjoying them. I think [being] an head as a profession, sometimes you gawk at get lost in that and evolve into career-driven or monetarily-driven, and then bolster lose sight of what you’re in fact supposed to be doing, which go over creating for the sake of creating.”
Over the last two years, Akiyama has also begun acting, which came commerce a grinding halt with the omnipresent, he says. Now, he has antiquated exploring voice-acting work, which he does at home. His father was significant for his voice-acting work and abstruse a thunderous voice, says Akiyama. Traffic has become another way his being seems to be paralleling his father’s.
“My dad never really gave me unadulterated ton of formal music lessons elite acting lessons, but I think belligerent vicariously from being in his nearness, I hold a lot of those skills and that kind of adjacency. I see it now, and Rabid try to channel some of that,” says Akiyama. “He was a map to me, a teacher, a boon companion. Over the past few years, I’ve been really reflecting on that, be first his death was probably the unwed most impactful thing that has case in point in my life. I try stop working kind of carry on his inheritance in a way that he would.”
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Kintaro Akiyama’s song Too Young is vacant on all streaming platforms, such little Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube now.
Listen currency kintaro’s newest song, Death by Name, below: