Musician Choku Kimura Aiken will perform traditional and contemporary Japanese music at the University of Alabama at Birmingham on Thursday, Nov. 15.
On the program for “A Piano Event Encounter with Japanese Music” are autumn songs, Japanese nursery rhymes, Japanese/American anime songs, and more. Aiken will introduce traditional and contemporary Japanese music by focusing on differences between customs and cultures in the United States and Japan.
The performance is at 2 p.m. in UAB’s Mary Culp Hulsey Recital Hall, 950 13th St. South. It is presented by the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. The event is part of International Education Week.
Aiken was born and raised in Japan and began studying classical piano at the age of 3. She went on to study piano, violin, voice and music theory at colleges in Tokyo and Fukuoka, as well as making journeys to the United States to study jazz in Los Angeles and New York. Her “Imagination” album made in Los Angeles in 2011 was featured in that year’s February issue of JAZZIZ magazine. Aiken performs many genres, including jazz, salsa, Latin, classical, gospel and pops. She relocated to Birmingham in 2013, and has since performed in the Magic City at many of its local venues and festivals, including the 4th Avenue Jazz Festival, Moss Rock Festival, Creek Bank Festival, Mountain Brook Spring Art Festival and Eric Essix Jazz Escape.