is a Japanese

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

pianist, composer and arranger.

Early life

Satoh was born in Tokyo on 6 October 1941. His mother was Setsu and his father, who owned small businesses, was Yoshiaki Satoh. The house that his family moved into in 1944 contained a piano; Masahiko started playing it at the age of five. He began playing the piano professionally at the age of 17,Schofield, John (8 October 1991), "Pianist Infuses Jazz with Japanese Spirit", ''The Wall Street Journal'', p. A20. "accompanying singers, magicians and strippers at a cabaret in the Ginza district".

Later life and career

By 1959 Satoh was playing in Georgie Kawaguchi's band, together with alto saxophonist Sadao Watanabe and tenor saxophonist

Akira Miyazawa Akira Miyazawa (宮沢昭) (December 6, 1927 in Matsumoto – July 6, 2000 in Tokyo) was a Japanese jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and flautist. Miyazawa played as a teenager in Japanese military bands during World War II, then embarked on a career ...

. Satoh graduated from Keio University.Iwanami, Yozo; Sugiyama, Kazunor
"Sato, Masahiko"
''The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz'' (2nd ed.). Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 24 February 2015. (Subscription required). At the age of 26, Satoh moved to the United States to study at the Berklee College of Music. He stayed for two years, during which he read about composing and arranging. He earned money working in a food shop and playing the piano in a hotel. In 1968 he wrote the music for, and conducted, a series of pieces that were combined with dance and performed in New York. After returning to Japan, he recorded ''Palladium'', his first album as leader, and appeared on a

Helen Merrill Helen Merrill (born Jelena Ana Milcetic; July 21, 1930) is an American jazz vocalist. Her first album, the eponymous 1954 recording '' Helen Merrill'' (with Clifford Brown), was an immediate success and associated her with the first generation ...

album. In his early career in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Satoh played in a free, percussive style. Satoh played at the 1971

Berlin Jazz Festival JazzFest Berlin (also known as the Berlin Jazz Festival) is a jazz festival in Berlin, Germany. Originally called the "Berliner Jazztage" (''Berlin Jazz Days''), it was founded in 1964 in West Berlin by the Berliner Festspiele. Venues included B ...

as part of a trio; he used a then-unusual

ring modulator In electronics, ring modulation is a signal processing function, an implementation of frequency mixing, in which two signals are combined to yield an output signal. One signal, called the carrier, is typically a sine wave or another simple ...

to alter the sound. Also in the early 1970s, he recorded with

Attila Zoller Attila Cornelius Zoller (June 13, 1927 – January 25, 1998) was a Hungarian jazz guitarist. After World War II, he escaped the Soviet takeover of Hungary by fleeing through the mountains on foot into Austria. In 1959, he moved to the U.S., wher ...

Karl Berger Karl Hans Berger (born March 30, 1935 in Heidelberg, Germany) is a German jazz pianist, composer, and educator. Career Berger played piano in Germany when he was ten and worked in his teens at a club in Heidelberg. He learned modern jazz from v ...

, and Albert Mangelsdorff. He wrote the psychedelic music for the 1973 anime film ''

Belladonna of Sadness is a 1973 Japanese adult animated art film produced by the animation studio Mushi Production and distributed by Nippon Herald Films. It is the third and final entry in Mushi Production's adult-oriented '' Animerama'' trilogy, following '' A Thou ...

''.Brenner, Robert (4 May 2016
"Movie Review: Belladonna of Sadness"
Huffington Post. Satoh has written arrangements for recordings led by, among others, Merrill, Kimiko Itoh, and Nancy Wilson. He also arranged for strings and quartet on Art Farmer's 1983 album ''Maiden Voyage''. In 1990 Satoh formed a large group, named Rantooga, that combined various forms of folk musics from around the world. In the early 1990s he composed music for a choir of 1,000 Buddhist monks. In the early 1990s he was reported as stating that 70% of his time was spent on arranging and composing, and the rest on playing and recording.

Compositions

Satoh has composed for film, television and advertisements. For instance, he made the music of

Kanashimi no Belladonna is a 1973 Japanese adult animated art film produced by the animation studio Mushi Production and distributed by Nippon Herald Films. It is the third and final entry in Mushi Production's adult-oriented '' Animerama'' trilogy, following '' A Thous ...

, a film in which the sound is very important ; all the songs of this movie are performed by his wife,

Chinatsu Nakayama Chinatsu Nakayama is a Japanese voice actress, writer, and politician. Biography Nakayama was born in Kumamoto prefecture, Japan on July 13, 1948. She began acting on stage as a child in 1955, then her family moved to Tokyo with the encouragement ...

. Some of his compositions are influenced by the space in the works of composer

Toru Takemitsu TORU or Toru may refer to: * TORU, spacecraft system * Toru (given name), Japanese male given name * Toru, Pakistan, village in Mardan District of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan *Tõru Tõru is a village in Saaremaa Parish, Saare County in western ...

. Satoh has also composed for traditional Japanese instruments, including the shakuhachi and biwa.

Discography

An asterisk (*) after the year indicates that it is the year of release.

As leader/co-leader

As sideman

References

;Bibliography * {{DEFAULTSORT:Satoh, Masahiko 1941 births Japanese jazz composers Japanese jazz pianists Living people 21st-century pianists