Vita

Born in Ōtsu, Shiga Prefecture, Japan, Kenichi Kawabata began piano lessons at the age of four and clarinet at twelve.

He studied clarinet performance and composition at Kyoto City University of Arts before continuing at the Royal Academy of Music London, where he completed his Master in clarinet with Distinction. While performing with the Philharmonia Orchestra and on other international stages, he later moved to Austria to study music pedagogy at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, graduating with Highest Distinction. Drawn increasingly to the act of capturing sound itself, he went on to complete the Master in Tonmeister at the Zurich University of the Arts first in class, with a perfect grade of 6.0.

Following an apprenticeship with Polyhymnia International in Amsterdam, he immersed himself in the leading edge of European classical recording. Since then he has produced over one hundred recording projects across Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, while continuing to perform as a clarinettist with the Symphonieorchester Vorarlberg, the Argovia Philharmonic, the Bregenzer Festspiele, and others.

Now based in Feldkirch, Austria, he works across three intertwined fields — performance, recording, and production. Because he remains a performer himself, he believes that recording too is an act of interpretation. Building on his master's thesis on the acoustics of nineteenth-century salons, his current focus is on bringing the salon — that culture in which music lived directly between people — back into the present. This has become the central aim of his future work.