Hiroko Nagahata is an active and accomplished pianist with experience in solo performance, vocal accompaniment, and chamber music.
Nagahata serves as a pianist for Irving Artists, a group with cellist Alexa Muhly. Most recently they released their first album Irving in 2019. The Album received critical acclaims from various magazines such as New York Concert Review and Fanfare.
Since relocating to Chicago in 2012, Nagahata has been invited to perform with a number of stellar artists and groups such as sopranos Juliet Petrus, Whitney Morrison, the Choir of America with Grammy award winning conductor Rene Clausen, clarinetist Heather Thon Dahl, violist Jonas Benson, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago school residency program, to name a few.
Nagahata has performed in numerous music festivals, most notably the Summit Music Festival in New York City, the International Academy of Music in St. Petersburg, and the European American Musical Alliance in Paris.
Nagahata was a Special Presentation Award winner of the Artists International Audition and made her New York solo recital debut at Carnegie Weill Recital Hall in 2009. Nagahata performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor with the New York Concerto Sinfonietta, conducted by Paul Hostetter, in the same venue in 2011.
As an avid music educator for the next generation, Nagahata is a piano instructor at schools and private studio, including Studio 814 of British International School of Chicago that collaborates with the Juilliard School. Nagahata served as an instructor of the first Studio 814 Performing Arts Camp in 2019 and as a guest coach for the Chicago Trio Chamber Music Workshop in 2016. She was a teaching assistant of piano, instructor of music theory, and accompanist (instrumental, vocal and choral) at NYSMF: New York Summer Music Festival at SUNY, Oneonta in 2012.
Nagahata has played multiple roles including translator, editor, singer, and lyricist for the best-selling piano method book My First Piano Adventure (Lesson books and Writing Books A-C) Japanese edition published from Zen-On Music Company in 2018. Nagahata is one of only six certified clinicians for Faber Piano Adventures in the U.S., who learned their teaching and performance method from authors Randall and Nancy Faber directly. Nagahata played a part as a translator and accompanist at Japanese workshop tour by Randall Faber in Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Sapporo and Tokyo in 2018.
Nagahata received a Doctor of Music Degree from Michigan State University, a Master of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music, and a Bachelor of Music Degree from Kobe College. Her primary teachers include: Deborah Moriarty, Efrem Briskin, Mari Nakano, and Yoko Ikeda.