Ayako Shirasaki was born in Setagaya, Tokyo, on September 16, 1969, and took the scenic route into jazz: classical piano from the age of five, jazz from ten — taught at home by her father, a jazz trumpeter — and then, of all things, a straight classical piano degree from the Tokyo University of the Arts, the most establishment musical address in the country. She moved to New York and finished a master's in jazz piano at the Manhattan School of Music in 2001. She turned up on other people's records first: she is the pianist on the vibraphonist Tim Collins's graduation recital, taped at the school on March 24, 2002 and released the following year. Her own debut, Existence, with Lewis Nash and Marco Panascia, came out on What's New Records in August 2003, a few weeks short of her thirty-fourth birthday; four more albums followed. She died of cancer at home in New York in November 2021, aged 52.
Cover art for Ayako Shirasaki's debut "Existence" (What's New Records, WNCJ-2124, 2003), with Marco Panascia and Lewis Nash. Used as a stand-in because no free-licensed photograph of Shirasaki could be found on Wikimedia Commons or elsewhere. Album cover art, copyright the rights holder (What's New Records), all rights reserved — this is not a Creative Commons or public-domain image.
Sources: Ayako Shirasaki — Wikipedia (English) , 白崎彩子 — Wikipedia (Japanese; birth date, Geidai, the father's teaching) , Ayako Shirasaki — Existence (What's New Records, WNCJ-2124, 2003) — Discogs , The Tim Collins Quartet: Live In Concert — All About Jazz (the 2002 Manhattan School of Music recital) , In Loving Memory of Ayako Shirasaki (1969–2021) — Bryant Park
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