Megumi Otsuka

Megumi Otsuka was born in Tokyo. In her native city she won the Young Composers Prize, and as a fifteen-year-old also a prize in the International Piano Competition where she performed with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. In 1991 she received Grand Prix in the Piano Accompanist International Contest in Rio de Janeiro, and Best Corepetiteur Special Award in the International Young Opera Singers Competition in Vienna. Megumi Otsuka has worked as both piano accompanist of leading singers including Franco Corelli, Renata Scotto, Walter Berry and others, and corepetiteur. In the latter capacity, she was involved in the preparation of the Bregenz Festival, and has worked with the Vienna State Opera, the Wiener Volksoper, Kammeroper, and the Neuer Oper Wien, as well as with the Ronacher and Raimund Theatres in Vienna and other institutions. She has toured in Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, Croatia, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Japan, Italy, the Americas, Austria, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Korea, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, and Cyprus.

Megumi Otsuka currently teaches at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna (which she coupled between 1992 and 1998 with teaching at the Prayner Conservatory). Her compositional output comprises songs, piano works, chamber and film music, as well as jazz and world music compositions. She also writes music for various musical and cabaret companies. As song accompanist, chamber player and composer, she has to her credit a formidable list of radio and television programmes and CD recordings made among other venues at the Vienna Musikverein, Konzerthaus, or Joe Zawinul’s jazz club Birdland located in the basement of the Vienna Hilton Hotel.