Angela Aki

Stage Name:Angela Aki アンジェラ・アキ (Anjera Aki)
Birth name :Kiyomi Aki 安芸 聖世美
Also known as: Angie, Lina
Born: September 15, 1977
Origin : Itano, Tokushima Prefecture, Shikoku, JapanFlag of Japan
Genre(s): J-Pop
Years active: 2000–present
Label(s): Sony Music Japan
Tofu Records
Website http://www.angela-aki.com/

Angela Aki (アンジェラ・アキ ,Anjera Aki), born Kiyomi Aki (安芸 聖世美 Aki Kiyomi) on September 15, 1977, is a singer-songwriter and pianist from Itano, Tokushima, Japan


Biography

Early life

Angela Aki's father is Japanese and her mother is Italian-American.[2][3] She is the daughter of Kiyoshi Aki, the owner and co-founder of AEON Institute of Language Education. This is one of the "Big Four" Eikaiwa (English conversation) schools in Japan. She began to take piano lessons when she was three years old. She lived in Tokushima-shi through sixth grade, and spent her junior high school days in Okayama-shi, Okayama. She moved to Hawaii when she was fifteen years old and graduated from Iolani School. Thus Angela Aki speaks English and Japanese. She got absorbed in music and surfing there for four years. Then she went to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and majored in political science[4] She became estranged from her family at that time.

Marriage

On March 9, 2007, Aki announced that she married Japanese recording engineer and music producer, Yoshihide Mikami (三上義英 ,Mikami Yoshihide?) by her blog, and made public the former divorce incidentally. [5]

Friends

She is good friends with JPOP star Yuna Ito. Both singers attended the same Japanese language school.

Ben Folds heard that Aki covered his "Still Fighting It" as c/w of her single "Tegami ~Haikei Juugo no Kimi e~", and he contacted in order to meet her. They were congenial spirits and made "Black Glasses" together. They used "the glasses" which were their common point as a metaphor of the masks for the outside.

Janis Ian is her e-mail friend.

Career

Beginnings

In 1997, she went to a Sarah McLachlan concert and felt that she should go into the music world at the age of 18. She decided to become a singer-songwriter. In 2000, she originally released an indie album in the United States, called These Words, which received much critical acclaim. After graduation from university, she found a job in Washington, D.C. and worked as a secretary. But, she could not give up her dream of being a singer and quit her job in 2001. She worked as a waitress for an hourly wage of 2 dollars 13 cents at noon, and she played songs at night at a nightclub every day. Aki had married her first album’s engineer, producer, and artist Tony Alany[6] who co-produced her first album in Vienna, VA. But they divorced. In 2002, she composed two tracks for "Let It Fall" by Dianne Eclar, a teenage pop singer from the Philippines.

Debut in Japan

With the production of the commercial music of the Japanese company, she went back to Japan. On September 27, 2003, Aki saw Shiina Ringo's concert in Nippon Budokan Hall, and promised herself holding her concert at the same place in three years though she was not able to contract with a record label yet, much less make her major debut. She performed many live in a music bar in Tokyo, made 100 or more songs, and also made many demo CDs. In 2005, in Japan, she released an indie mini-album under Virgo Music entitled One, which alerted Nobuo Uematsu to her music. She contracted with the EPIC record through the above-mentioned CM producer, and she made her major debut with the single "HOME" at last in September, 2005. In 2006, she sang the theme song for Final Fantasy XII, "Kiss Me Good-Bye". On December 26, 2006, she held the concert in Nippon Budokan Hall, and her long-cherished desire has been fulfilled.

Reaching an English audience

In May 2006, Angela signed with Tofu Records in order to release English singles and albums. Her first release with Tofu was releasing "Kiss Me Good-Bye" as a digital single in the USA, with a slightly altered track list. Later that month she performed the Final Fantasy XII theme song, "Kiss Me Good-Bye" at the premiere PLAY! A Video Game Symphony concert in Chicago on May 27, 2006. With orchestral backup, she played piano and sang the English lyrics, which she had written herself. She also performed a cover version of "Eyes On Me", the theme song of Final Fantasy VIII, with a piano accompaniment.

Presently

Angela Aki was chosen to sing the theme song titled “Ai no Kisetsu” for the morning drama “Tsubasa” broadcast on March 30, 2009 on NHK.