About Me
As a composer and an educator, Mr. Nakano’s musical activities have included community service and outreach to help bridge Western and Eastern musical cultures together. His recent works show the merging of both musical traditions, and also makes reference to theatre, philosophy, rituals and spiritualities in a series of compositions entitled Time Song. Mr. Nakano received both his Bachelor's and Master's degrees with the highest honors in composition from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where he studied with Lee Hyla and John Harbison. Later, he studied with Dutch composer Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam and at the Royal Conservatory of Hague as the Japanese Government Overseas Study Program Artist. He received his Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at San Diego, where he studied with Chinary Ung. In addition to being the first recipient of the Toru Takemitsu Award in Composition from the Japan Society of Boston, Mr. Nakano has also received composition awards, fellowships and grants from the Asian Cultural Council, the Japanese Agency of Cultural Affairs, the Tanglewood Music Center (Margaret Lee Croft Fellowship), Meet the Composer (Global Connections Grant), the Composers Conference at Wellesley College, the MacDowell Colony (National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship), the Corporation of Yaddo, the Millay Colony for the Arts (2), the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Blue Mountain Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (CSG Fellowship), the Ragdale Foundation (William and Solange Brown Fellowship for New Musical Composition), the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Kimmel Harding Nelson Award), the American Music Center(4), ASCAP(8), the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Coca-Cola Foundation Fellowship), the Ernest Bloch Music Festival, the New School University, the New England Conservatory and the University of California at San Diego (Gluck Composition Fellowship). Mr. Nakano is a member of the American Music Center, the College Music Society and ASCAP.