Mayu Funaba
Piano
Born in Chiba, Japan. McGill Bachelor-graduated pianist Mayu Funaba began her music studies at age 4. She has studied classical piano under Ms.Aki Kuroda, Ms. Kaoru Ujita, and Mr. Nikita Juzhanin, jazz piano under Jeffry Johnston and Min Rager, and Tango piano under Pablo Estigarribia.
After she graduated from Toride Shōyō High School's music course, Mayu moved to the United Kingdom where she studied music production at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford Surrey, where she successfully completed the course and received her Higher Diploma certificate. While studying in the U.K. she started her career as a pianist, working at the Ambassador Theatre in Woking, Surrey.
After finishing her studies at the Academy of Contemporary Music she returned to Japan where she began performing extensively as a soloist and accompanist playing many different genres of music at different music venues around Japan as one of the musicians at Nakamura Ltd.
In 2009 Mayu passed The Associated Board of Royal College of Music Diploma with distinction. In 2010, she completed the Stuttgart Music University Master Class under a scholarship from the Tokyo International Association of Artists. In 2013 Mayu composed music for the exhibition of the audio and visual installation piece "a stake in the river" at the Nakanogo Biennial 2013 in collaboration with Junichi Akagawa and Yuki Shindo. She also performed a piano improvisation at the exhibition where she received favorable reviews.
In 2019, she participated in the Stowe Tango Music festival, where she performed as one of the members of the tango orchestra with maestro Nestor Marconi.
In 2021, she started working as a professional ballet piano accompanist at the École supérieure de ballet du Québec. Currently, she is performing and teaching music based in Montreal, where she received her bachelor of music in jazz piano study at McGill University.