Masa Matsuura: Selected Works

Dreaming Stone (2009)
for alto (or tenor) saxophone
5'
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Masa Matsuura and Sumichika Arimura perform Matsuura's Dreaming Stone

Dreaming Stone (2019)
for euphonium and piano
5'
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40 Melodic Studies for Developing Skills in Musical Interpretation [solo/duet]
for alto saxophone/alto saxophone duet
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Introduction to Masa Matsuura's 40 Melodic Studies for Developing Skills in Musical Interpretation

Masa Matsuura was born in Tokyo in March 1978. After majoring in singing in the Performance Department of the Faculty of Music at Toho Gakuen University, she entered graduate school at same university, specializing in composition and subsequently undertaking the ensemble diploma course, majoring in piano. Matsuura continued her studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, pursuing a course in piano accompaniment under the direction of Jean Koerner.

Matsuura has been awarded prizes in the Suita Music Competition (composition category), the Sōgakudō Japanese Song Competition (composition category), and the Japan Mozart Music Competition (piano category). She studied composition with Masahiro Ishijima, Hitomi Kaneko, Keiko Harada, piano with Kiko Imaizumi, Kaoru Ōsaki, Hideyo Ozawa, Miyoko Goldberg Yamane, and Akiko Hoshino, sightreading and piano accompaniment with Jean Koerner, Hisako Imamura, and Satoshi Sandō, and singing with Konomi Nagoya.

Her compositions include Requiem Dedicated to the Victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake (2012), Cytokinesis and Tōya for saxophone ensemble, and many other works that have been performed in Japan, Europe and the United States. In 2018, Matsuura composed a work for four-part choir to commemorate the 1,080th anniversary of the foundation of the Naritasan Shinshōji temple in Chiba Prefecture. In March 2023, she released two publications, Forty Studies for Saxophone for Improving Score-Reading and Sight-Reading Abilities and a supplement to this publication entitled Forty Studies for Two Saxophones (published by Arimusique). Both of these publications have now been reissued, the first sets having sold out in less than a month.

As an ensemble pianist, Masa Matsuura has performed extensively with many leading musicians in Japan and abroad and has been engaged as the official pianist at international saxophone competitions and at the Hamamatsu International Wind Academy.

Together with the saxophonist Sumichika Arimura, she has released two CDs, Romance and Träumerei, on the Fontec label, the former of which received a special commendation from the Rekōdo Geijutsu magazine.

Matsuura has taught as a part-time lecturer at Tokyo University of the Arts and Ueda Women’s Junior College and currently serves as lecturer at Senzoku Gakuen College of Music.

To learn more about Masa Matsuura, visit zen-on.co.jp.