Keizoh Kawano (河野啓三, ''Kawano Keizoh''; born February 4, 1971) is a Japanese

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

keyboardist A keyboardist or keyboard player is a musician who plays keyboard instruments. Until the early 1960s musicians who played keyboards were generally classified as either pianists or organists. Since the mid-1960s, a plethora of new musical instr ...

, and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

who served as keyboardist and pianist for the band

T-Square A T-square is a technical drawing instrument used by draftsmen primarily as a guide for drawing horizontal lines on a drafting table. The instrument is named after its resemblance to the letter T, with a long shaft called the "blade" and a sho ...

until August 2020.

Biography

Early life

Kawano was born in Tokyo. He started playing the

electone Electone is the trademark used for electronic organs produced by Yamaha Corporation, Yamaha. With the exception of the top end performance models, most Electones are based on the design of the Electric organ#Spinet organs (1949–), spinet electro ...

when he was 6 years old . While attending Kitazono High School in Tokyo, he started playing

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

and

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

under the influence of his older brother. After graduating, he started working as a professional musician and as a support musician for singers and artists regardless of their music genre.

2000–2019: T-Square

In 2000, bassist Toyoyuki Tanaka introduced Kawano to

, a

jazz fusion Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, ...

band he was a part of from 1981 to 1986. He joined the band as a support member from in the fall. In 2004, he and drummer Satoshi Bandoh officially joined T-Square. In 2005, he joined the Kumi Adachi Club Pangea, which was formed by former T-Square drummer Hiroyuki Noritake. In 2011, he announced that he would be releasing his first solo album, ''Dreams'', going on tour to commemorate the release. The album released on November 23, 2011, and charted at No. 211 on the

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in Nov ...

charts.

2019–present: Hospitalization and withdrawal from T-Square

On February 6, 2019, Kawano was urgently hospitalized due to

cerebral hemorrhage Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. It is one kind of bleed ...

. Because of this, he took a break from musical activities and was replaced by

Philippe Saisse Philippe Saisse is a French jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and arranger. Career He was born in Marseille and raised in Paris. After studying at the Conservatoire de Paris he won a scholarship to the Berklee College of Mus ...

. On August 27, 2019, through their official website, he reported that he was going to be discharged after being hospitalized for more than half a year. The update also mentioned the

pathology Pathology is the study of the causes and effects of disease or injury. The word ''pathology'' also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in ...

and course of onset with moderate bleeding in his right

putamen The putamen (; from Latin, meaning "nutshell") is a round structure located at the base of the forebrain (telencephalon). The putamen and caudate nucleus together form the dorsal striatum. It is also one of the structures that compose the basal n ...

, but with treatment performed without the need of surgery. There was no

hematoma A hematoma, also spelled haematoma, or blood suffusion is a localized bleeding outside of blood vessels, due to either disease or trauma including injury or surgery and may involve blood continuing to seep from broken capillary, capillaries. A he ...

, but he was paralyzed on his left side of the body and is now unable to play the piano as he had before. He continued with outpatient treatment and rehabilitation, but still played with the band in live performances and song production for the band's next album. On August 27, 2020, it announced that it would withdraw from T-Square as he was concerned about the prognosis and rehabilitation after treatment for the cerebral hemorrhage that developed in 2019. It was judged that sufficient performance activity for the band would be difficult in his current state of recovery. When asked about his withdrawal, he had decided that he would do so before the spring of 2019, but his decision was opposed by Andoh who wanted him to stay. He participated in the production of ''AI Factory'', released in 2020. On October 28, 2020, the album ''Crème de la Crème'' was released, making it his last album with T-Square as an official member. He appeared as a special guest at the T-Square Year-End Special 2020 in Tokyo, held at the Nihonbashi Mitsui Hall on December 31, 2020, and continues to perform with T-Square in live concerts and write songs for them to record in Studio Albums. He released his second solo album, "Best Friends" on November 23, 2022.

Discography

References

{{Authority control 1971 births Japanese keyboardists Japanese male pianists Living people