Yuki Ohnishi

Music Producer
Composer, Arranger, Engineer

Berklee College of Music
BM Jazz Composition
Contemporary Writing and Production Major

Yuki is a composer, arranger, and engineer studying jazz composition in Boston. He was born in Japan in 1984. At an early age, he began playing the violin. He later took part in the junior orchestra and played classical music, including popular symphonies by composers like Beethoven and Dvorak. Yuki learned to play the flute and piccolo when he was in high school, and joined his high school brass band.

While Yuki entered the Tokyo University of Science in 2004, he started studying jazz piano and performing with the Waseda University High Society Orchestra. This is one of the most famous student big bands in Tokyo. With this band, he joined for some live shows and competitions as a pianist. They performed with The Juilliard School Jazz Ensemble Band at Dizzy’s Bar at New York’s Lincoln Center in February 2006. He also studied jazz piano and composition under Junko Moriya, winner of the 2005 Thelonious Monk Composer’s Competition.

In April 2008, Yuki played keyboards to accompany musicians playing “Enka” (Japanese traditional music) at the Sweet Basil Japan live house (STB139) in Tokyo. From this time on, he also began to play synthesizers along with the piano.

After he worked as a website creator in Japan, Yuki enrolled at the Berklee College School of Music, majoring in Jazz Composition and Contemporary Writing and Production. His musical horizons expanded to include the whole world. He met many good musicians from many different countries and heard many styles of music that he had never played before.

In particular, gospel music stirred him both in terms of harmony and soul. It is a kind of bridge between jazz and classical music. Encountering gospel is one of the big turning points in Yuki’s music. Gospel music gave him an additional sense of harmony that he didn’t have before. He became able to combine the classical harmony he had used when he played with orchestras to the pop and jazz field. Also recording with gospel singers added an authentic American flavor to his music.

Yuki began as mainly a pianist, but has since expanded his studies to include production and composition. This allows him to be a bigger part of the process, and have more of an impact on how the music sounds while still getting to play with other musicians.

Yuki has familiarized himself with many instruments and has a true appreciation for the variety of music. He has a border-less and hybrid style that uses electric and acoustic sounds, both traditional classical and jazz harmonies, and live band and sequences. His music is simple and direct, and can be understood even by ordinary listeners, because it is based on sharing emotion with the listener. He knows the sounds everyone likes. More than anything, Yuki loves playing and making music with other musicians.

Yuki Ohnishi Biography (PDF)

Yuki Ohnishi Resume (PDF)