as teacher
Noriko has taught as a professor of piano at the Royal College of Music, London and Associate professor of keyboard at School of Music, University of Minnesota, USA.
At her private studio in addition to her work with advanced pianists she enjoys giving lessons to a range of levels from beginners to amateur pianists.
Recently, after a long gap, she has also resumed taking young learners convinced of the importance of receiving an excellent foundation in musical training from an early age.
“I have known Noriko Kawai for about 15 years, from the time that she became my colleague at the University of Minnesota. Noriko is a superb artist and wonderful teacher: a combination that is exceedingly rare.
Her range as a performer is simply stunning, spanning over 400 years of musical composition, solo, chamber and orchestral. And unlike so many accomplished pianists, Noriko’s expertise does not stop music from the past. Noriko is internationally admired for her performances some of the most inventive composers of our own time. Noriko is a complete musician.
As a teacher, Noriko is a patient, compassionate, and sensitive, and at the same time able to endow students with a sense of high musical excellence. She was beloved by her students at the university and for good reason: Noriko is that rare teacher who while developing a student’s musical technique and sensibility also allows the student to find their own voice, their own musical personality.
I have been blessed by having had some extraordinary teachers through the years of my long musical apprenticeship. Later in my career as a music scholar, I was equally blessed to know some of the most accomplished scholars, performers, and composers of the past fifty years, I count Noriko Kawai among that constellation.”
Dr. Michael Cherlin
Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota