©Takashi Kawashima

Tomoko Mukaiyama is an Amsterdam-based, Japanese-born pianist, visual artist, and multidisciplinary maker. With studies at conservatories in Japan, the USA and the Netherlands, her roots are found in Western classical music. Mukaiyama’s career gained momentum in 1991 when she won the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition with Conlon Nancarrow and Meredith Monk. Since then, she collaborated with highly renowned ensembles and orchestras, including Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic.

Drawn to the unknown, Mukaiyama challenges expectations of a traditional concert experience. Since the turn of the millennium, she has built a portfolio as a visual artist, creating immersive installations for leading platforms such as the Biennale of Sydney, Oerol Festival, the Yokohama Triennale, and the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial. Her earlier projects clearly showcase a desire to reinvent piano performances. for you (2005) offered a public piano recital designed for a single audience member, while wasted (2009) was a monumental traveling installation of 12,000 white silk dresses dedicated to fertility, for which the feedback of the audience was used in a concert of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

As an advocate for cultural exchange, Mukaiyama actively seeks collaborations outside her own field and worked alongside a diverse array of film directors, designers, dancers, choreographers, and photographers, ranging from the architect Toyo Ito and film director Aryan Kaganof to the choreographer Jiří Kylián.

Her work can be experienced in a wide variety of places depending on the context, audience and her collaborators. She performs anywhere from the famous Lincoln Center in New York to more unconventional spaces like an art gallery or even a local fish market. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she pioneered new ways to connect through A Live series (2020-2021) together with filmmaker Reinier van Brummelen, a virtual concert series broadcast from various unique locations.

Her work is strongly connected to the world around us. She is not afraid to show her version of the truth, often giving her audiences a clear political message. Today, her practice continues to evolve in ambitious new directions, highlighted by her very first solo exhibition at Arts Maebashi (JP) in 2026. Concurrently, her foundation has embraced a new philosophy under the banner WE ARE THE HOUSE. Marking a noticeable shift in focus, this initiative slowly moves the spotlight away from Mukaiyama as an individual artist and towards building a dynamic collective of international makers and thinkers as well as local voices, specifically inviting those who challenge existing systems and stand up for minorities.

Read more about Selected works

Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation

In 2007, Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation was formed. The foundation aims to produce novel collaborations that are inspired by Mukaiyama’s artistic vision of intertwining different contemporary art and music forms. Thus, the foundation marries dance, photography, architecture, music, and more, towards the formulations of original aesthetic questions and conclusions. Hereby the organization also wishes to make its productions accessible to the wider public, both in the Netherlands and the international art scene. The Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation operates as a producer of the projects of Tomoko Mukaiyama and has received multiple year grants of governmental support by the Dutch Performing Arts Fund.

board of the Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation

The foundation is guided by a board of three dedicated members, each bringing their own distinct field of expertise:
Chairman: Henk van der Meulen – former director of The Royal Conservatory in The Hague
Treasurer: Roland Kupers – consultant and advisor
Members: Aybala Carlak – freelance journalist and media maker, specialized in economics and culture. Program manager at Stichting Democratie en Media.

advising committee of the Tomoko Mukaiyama Foundation

Britta Böhler – former Member of the Senate of the Netherlands
Ere Haru – columnist, former member of the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
DJ Isis – DJ, consultant, coach, art director and programmer
Tetsuya Ozaki – journalist and publisher
Saskia van Schaik – former editor in chief VPRO Documentaries (Dutch broadcasting company)

Download: Biography Tomoko Mukaiyama ENG