Exciting new musician announced for Quadra Island Festival of Chamber Music

By Pune Media On May 26, 2025

This year’s 2025 Quadra Island Festival of Chamber Music will be featuring several musicians who have never before participated in the festival. One of these highly accomplished people is pianist Akiko Tominaga

Tominaga, whose first name means “child of bright and clear light,” was born in Japan and began playing piano at the age of four. When she was eight, her family moved to Connecticut in the U.S.

She was fortunate to be mentored by Yoshie Akimoto, who has remained an important influence in her life. Although Tominaga had long hoped to attend Juilliard, Akimoto encouraged her to apply to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Curtis has a maximum of 160 students (only four per cent of applicants are accepted), with acceptance based on aptitude and artistic promise. The student to teacher ratio is 4/3, allowing the student to work with many teachers, and each student is given a full scholarship.

The famous Eleanor Sokoloff was Tominaga’s main inspiration while at Curtis. Ms. Sokoloff’s strict and comprehensive instruction (learn a new Bach Prelude and Fugue every one or two weeks), not only nurtured Akiko’s abilities, but also modelled how to be a good teacher.

Following her time at Curtis, Tominaga enrolled in the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Ontario. There, instructor Mark Durand taught her the nuances of the physical approach to music. Something that may not occur to most non-musicians is that without core strength and the knowledge of natural physical motions, many serious pianists have had their careers cut short due to injuries inflicted by hours of practice and playing. Tominaga explains that having correct posture and movement is “freeing and fully allows a person to express the music with no physical blocking.”

She enjoys working with other musicians. She helped found the Trio Lajoie in Montreal and especially loved their tour of the Atlantic provinces. Now based in Calgary, she has collaborated with Calgary Philharmonic concert master, violinist Diana Cohen, amongst many others. She presently teaches at the Montreal Royal Conservatory in Calgary, and currently her favourite composer is Frederico Mompou of Spain.

As a child, Tominaga dreamed of being a superstar. Her solo debut at the age of 17 (Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini) took place in the Alice Tully hall at the Lincoln Centre in New York City. She came to realize that the life of a concert pianist was a solitary and “not that glorious” way of life. Her greatest joy

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