BIOGRAPHY

"My music is my heart and when I sing, that is what I’m delivering. It combines the two most important things I strive for - love and music. I write from what I am feeling, what I have experienced, what moves me, my hopes and my dreams. I see beauty and magic in everyday reality, so enjoy telling stories with my lyrics, incorporating them with acoustic, real instruments, and plenty of vocal harmonies." - Kiyomi

Kiyomi can be described as a girl with a sunny disposition, but as we all have our masks we present to the world, there are hidden parts which are sometimes yearning to come out. This is why music has played such a huge role in Kiyomi’s life so far.

As a child, Kiyomi’s life can be described as lonely and unstable at times. She didn’t have the luxury of having a stable environment to thrive in, so found she had to keep to herself a lot of the basic emotions that are usually expressed. She learned to rely on herself at a too young age. Being born into an extremely musical family, she found solace and a way to express herself in music through singing and piano. Singing, her main love, has always been a way in which she could escape into a safe, happy world that she created.

Life was a big pointless blur to her until she discovered the power she had through music. In high school, as she sang the soprano solo in a Mozart piece, as she felt the audience responding, some with tears, she realized that this was her connection to the world. She could bring out the hidden parts of random strangers just by expressing what was in her heart.

She won the Best Musician’s Award in high school, and went on to NYU as a classical voice major, from which she later transferred out of. She also studied a lot of musical theatre. During college, she realized that there was only so much she could deliver singing other people’s music, so began writing her own songs. Sarah Mclachlan has always been one of her biggest inspirations. Listening to her music, or playing and singing it has helped her escape difficult times. Her lyrics touch reality so accurately, and her music is breathtaking, at times. Other inspirations are Norah Jones - her style, her instrumentation and her mellow singing voice, ToriAmos - her piano and songwriting ability, Fiona Apple - her hidden pains and experiences coming out in her music, Jewel’s old stuff - how her life is expressed through it, Eva Cassidy - how she can turn a standard into magic, really, some classical music, some opera, some musical theatre, and plenty more.

Influences or inspirations, to Kiyomi, can also mean almost anything, really. Life is probably the biggest one of all. Most of her songs are written from what she’s experienced, sometimes straight out of one of the 15 or so journals she’s written. Books are a huge part of who she is, as well, influencing her music. People, everything about what makes somebody human, she finds intriguing and sometimes inspiring.

She mainly likes to perform with natural and acoustic sounding instruments, and finds herself writing more mellow melodies. She loves to play around with vocal harmonies, adding plenty of them to her compositions.

Kiyomi has had the opportunity to perform all across the country, and in Japan and Korea. She has also performed for foreign ambassadors and congressmen at the UN. She has appeared on TV a few times, during her touring on local news channels, while working as a voice/piano instructor on Go TV, and through Video City, where her music videos have been featured.

Kiyomi will continue to write and perform, because she has no other choice, as music is a part of her.