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Rutgers IJS Closing Women’s History Month Celebration featuring Yayoi Ikawa
March 28, 2025 @ 7:30 pm – 10:00 pm EDT
Clements welcomes Renowned Pianists and Bandleader Yayoi Ikawa
The Institute of Jazz Studies’s presents the dynamic Yayoi Ikawa and her band featuring Michael O’Brian on bass and Kenneth Salters on drums.
Yayoi Ikawa . Born in Tokyo, Japan, but raised musically in New York, Yayoi is an experience in ingenuity and compassion. As a pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader, Yayoi has worked in many countries. Being exposed to diverse music scene in New York after moving from Japan, Yayoi quickly adopted herself in various styles of music such as Jazz, Gospel, R&B, Soul, Classical and World music. After completing her studies at New School where she received the Henry and Gill Block scholarship, Yayoi was a faculty member at the International Jazz and Dance Academy in Slovenia along with her mentor Reggie Workman in 2003 and 2004.
After recording a straight ahead jazz piano trio on Nippon Crown release “Angel Eyes” in 2004, she self produced “Color of Dreams” in 2005 displaying her original compositions. Yayoi has toured nationally as well as internationally with her groups, and appeared International Jazz festivals in Japan, Italy, Haiti, France, Slovenia, and Costa Rica. In 2008, Yayoi started “The Bridge Project” to create musical dialogue between New York and Tokyo musicians in an experimental environment. In 2009, the project toured in Costa Rica through a sponsorship of U.S. Embassy. In 2018, Yayoi was invited to participate in Piano Kon Sa Ka Ekri, a piano festival in Martinique. She started to collaborate with local musicians immediately, and the project performed at Première Rencontre Autour du Piano in Guadeloupe. In 2019, Yayoi’s bridge project featuring Hatian vocalist Emeline Michel was featured in Sakura Matsuri, a celebration of Japanese culture in Brooklyn Botanical Garden. While working towards her master degree at NYU, Yayoi’s orchestra work for film was premiered at Lincoln Center in 2007. As a composer and arranger, Yayoi received commissions from Modern Music Society of Tokyo, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Montreal based sculpture David Baumflek.
Yayoi has worked with such legendary artists as Reggie Workman, Michael Carvin, Howard Johnson, Michal Urbaniak, Butch Morris, Craig Harris, Lenny Pickett, Frank Lacy, Lonnie Plaxico, Fostina Dixon, Salim Washington, Emeline Michel, James Germain, Daniel Bernard Roumain, The Meditations, Kaissa etc. Yayoi is a music director at First Baptist Church in Piscataway NJ, and a jazz piano instructor at City College of New York, Brooklyn College. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in International Studies from International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan.
Michael Slatters – Drummer, composer and bandleader Kenneth Salters presents his debut album as a leader, Enter to Exit (Destiny Records). Salters has become a fixture on Manhattan’s West Village independent jazz scene and around the world as an in-demand sideman. His band is comprised of a coterie of musicians with whom Salters has surrounded himself for the better part of a decade, performing a set of originals and two emotionally significant covers that serve as a memoir to Salters’ time in New York City.
Born in New Haven, CT, and raised in Columbia, SC, Salters began his musical career on trombone before pursuing his studies as a percussion major at the University of South Carolina. Since moving to New York in 2006, he has worked with luminaries in jazz and R&B including Don Byron, Chris Potter, and Aretha Franklin.
Salters’ birthplace is part of the double meaning behind the band’s name–Haven. Salters explains that one goal with the band is to serve as the audience’s safe haven for music. The band includes one of Salters’ mentors, Myron Walden, on saxophone, joined by Thelonious Monk Saxophone Competition finalist Tivon Pennicott and rising star trumpeter Matt Holman in the front line. Salters’ rhythm section compatriots include guitarist Aki Ishiguro, pianist (and Destiny Records labelmate) Brad Whiteley, and Spencer Murphy on bass. The group is complemented by special guest pianist Shai Maestro on “Deception” and harpist Bridget Kibbey on four pieces.
Michael O’Brien . Bassist. Composer. Educator Michael O’Brien studied bass under Anthony Cox, and West African and Haitian percussion under Marc Anderson. Michael has been performing and composing for over a decade with such notables as Gene Pitney, Dave King, Jeff Kashiwa, Todd Reynolds, Wessel Anderson, David Binney, The Jazz Mandolin Project, Joel Harrison, Marty Haugin, Peter Ostroushko, Christian Howes, John Van Ohlen, Hod O’Brien, Stephanie Nakasian, Dan Weiss, Marc Giuliana, Roseanna Vitro, Daniel Kelly, Marc Anderson, Mary Ellen Childs, Bruce Henry, Laura Caviani, Electropolis, Clay Moore, Daniel Alexander Jones, J. Otis Powell!, Connie Evingson, and Prudence Johnson. His compositions are performed by the acclaimed string quartet Ethel, the Clay Moore trio, the Kelly Rossum Quintet, Electropolis, the April Sellers Dance Collective, and Karen Lyu and Global Jazz. In June of 2004 Michaels’ composition “Pine” was premired by Ethel at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, CT.
Ethel debuted “Pine” at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C in January of 2005. Michael has been commissioned by the Jazz is Now Orchestra through the Jerome Foundation. He has had compositions recorded on Kelly Rossums’ “The Party’s Over/Begun” and “Renovation”, Electropolis’ “More Music for Trips”, and Karen Lyu and Global Jazz’s “live”. In 2004 Michael received the New Mexico Music Industry Award for Best Remake with the group New York Louie and Friends. The Kelly Rossum Quintets cd “Renovation” was voted one of the top ten cds released in 2004 by the City Pages. The Star and Tribune voted it one of the top ten local releases and one of the top twenty overalll releases of 2004. The Kelly Rossum Quintet were also nominated for the best acoustic jazz group, and best jazz recording for the 2004 Minnesota Music Awards. Electropolis was nominated for the category of Best New Artist in the 2003 Minnesota Music Awards.
O’Brien’s experience includes inter-arts collaborations with The Choreographers Evening in collaboration with Choreographer April Sellers; Three Legged Races’ Summer Blizzard in “La Chanteuse Nubiene” collaborating with playwright Daniel Alexander’ Jones, the Miami production of “Gershwin the Klezmer”; the Illusion Theater’s productions of “Spirit House” and” Another Song About Paris”; composer Mary Ellen Childs’ percussion and choreography piece, “Crash”, the Zorongo Flamenco dance company, and collaborations with the poet J. Otis Powell!
Michael has performed at the IAJE (International Jazz Educators conference), PASIC (Percussive Arts Societies International Convention), American Composers Forums’ Sonic Circuits Festival, the Musica Mundi Choir festival and competition, the LaCrosse Jazz Festival, and the Twin Cities’ Hot Summer Jazz Festival.
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