Takashi Matsunaga (松永貴志) was born on 27 January 1986 in Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture, between Kobe and Osaka. His father loved jazz, and Matsunaga began teaching himself piano at five, along with the electric organ; a Kobe Shimbun profile adds that the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, which he lived through at eight, became the starting point of his music career. He won a national electronic-organ competition as a child and from 1997 studied with Tadao Kitano, leader of the Arrow Jazz Orchestra. In 1999 the pianist Hank Jones is reported to have called his playing outstanding, and in August 2001, at fifteen, he gave his professional debut recital and became the youngest artist to play at Blue Note Osaka. A first orchestral performance, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, followed in August 2002.

His first album, Takashi (Somethin' Else, TOCJ-68058), came out on 28 May 2003, when he was seventeen. It was a trio date with Daiki Yasukagawa on bass and Junji Hirose on drums, and the same trio made Moko-Moko (6 November 2003), recorded at Toshiba-EMI Studio 3 in Tokyo on 15 to 17 August 2003. Blue Note issued that record outside Japan in 2004 under the title Storm Zone, with nine tracks that are all Matsunaga's compositions. His official biography says it made him the youngest artist in Blue Note's history to record a leader album, a mark previously held by Miles Davis. He had by then appeared at Tokyo JAZZ in 2003 with Herbie Hancock, according to the same biography.

In 2004 he took a New York rhythm section into the studio and on the road. Today (Somethin' Else, TOCJ-68063, 26 May 2004) was produced by Matsunaga with Michael Cuscuna, and credits Ugonna Okegwo and Daiki Yasukagawa on bass, Eric Harland and Masahiko Osaka on drums and Hidenori Midorikawa on alto saxophone. "Open Mind," which appears on it, was the theme of TV Asahi's news programme Hodo Station, and a separate single (19 May 2004) paired Matsunaga's version with one by the saxophonist Saori Yano. Okegwo and Harland also made up the Takashi Matsunaga Trio on Inorganic Orange (2006), which includes "C Jam Blues," "On Green Dolphin Street" and "A Child Is Born." The year brought recognition at home: the Swing Journal Jazz Disk Award's New Star Award, the Osaka city Sakuya Konohana Prize and the 14th Idemitsu Music Award. He also played with Bobby McFerrin that year, and in 2006 he performed Rhapsody in Blue with the New Japan Philharmonic at Suntory Hall.

Love Makes the Earth Float (2008) brought in Hiroaki Mizutani and Akira Sotoyama on bass and drums alongside Yasukagawa and Hirose. In 2012 he was credited on piano for the jazz anime Kids on the Slope, whose soundtrack (Epic, ESCL 3874) was produced by Yoko Kanno and credits Shun Ishiwaka on drums and includes hard-bop standards such as "Moanin'" and "Someday My Prince Will Come." Good News! followed in November 2013, a record with Mizutani on bass and Yasuo Sano on drums that mixes jazz with pieces written for television and animation. In December 2013 he played piano at a Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts reception at the Louvre. He is credited on piano on the 2021 Netflix Cowboy Bebop soundtrack album by Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts, and in 2022 he contributed music for NHK Kobe.

Radio has been a second platform: ABC Radio's Matsunaga Takashi no Music File ran from 2012 to 2021, and Matsunaga Takashi no GOLDEN JAZZ RADIO has been on AM stations nationwide since January 2019. His official site lists Ron Carter, Christian McBride, Jack DeJohnette, Eric Harland, Bobby McFerrin and Chaka Khan among his collaborators. In 2024 he was selected as a Recording Academy member, and he composed the theme for a Kansai broadcasters' project marking the 30th anniversary of the Hanshin-Awaji earthquake that won the Grand Prize in the Journalism and Reporting category at the 62nd Galaxy Awards. He has also devised Top Note Bass Theory, a music-theory book that the Juilliard School library acquired.

as if Absolute. (Pure Wave) was recorded at Van Gelder Studio on 5 May 2025, a seven-piece, 31-minute programme on a Steinway concert grand. On 6 July 2026 his site announced a new album that includes a duo with Christian McBride on "Ride Five." He remains active.

Matsunaga works in the piano-trio tradition of mainstream and post-bop jazz, with a bright, rhythmic touch; one review of Storm Zone called the record upbeat and exhilarating and singled out the syncopated, bouncy feel of "Moko-Moko" and "Jungle Song." Alongside his own tunes he plays standards ("Beautiful Love," "Caravan," "Yesterdays," "Sing, Sing, Sing," "Jive at Five") and arrangements of television and animation themes; Love Makes the Earth Float includes his version of "A Cruel Angel's Thesis" from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

His public identity is broader than a club pianist's. He is a media composer, a radio host and a classical-crossover performer, who has played Rhapsody in Blue with orchestras and, in 2021 concerts, two-piano programmes with the classical pianist Shota Nakano. Against that, his catalogue is almost entirely jazz: Blue Note and Somethin' Else releases, a Swing Journal jazz award, a jazz-anime soundtrack, a jazz radio programme and trio records with American jazz rhythm sections.