Ruriko Osawa
NVMTA Spotlight: February 2024
Northern Virginia Music Teachers Association presents Ruriko Osawa as our February 2024 spotlight teacher of the month!
Bio
Japanese-born pianist, Ruriko Osawa, is an accomplished performer both as a soloist and chamber musician. Although her degrees focused on solo performance, she has collaborated with many singers and instrumentalists. Her interest in chamber music led to her participation at the Bowdoin Music Festival in Maine and the Idyllwild Chamber Music Festival in California. She received an Accompanying Assistantship from Peabody Conservatory during her study at the conservatory. Winner of numerous competitions and a recipient of the Grand Prize at the Sapporo (Japan) Young Musicians Concert for her “outstanding performance,” she has appeared as a soloist in the Temple Square Concert Series in Salt Lake City, Utah. She also appeared as a soloist with the Sapporo Musicians Concert Series and Sapporo City Hall Concert Series in Japan.
Dr. Osawa earned her B.M. in Piano Performance and Pedagogy at Brigham Young University as a recipient of the E. Mona Smith Scholarship and the Outstanding Achievement Award in Piano Performance. She was awarded the Anne and Aaron Richmond Scholarship from Boston University, where she earned her M.M. in Piano Performance. She completed her Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Her major teachers include Paul Pollei, Anthony di Bonaventura, Tong-Il Han, and Ellen Mack.
As a devoted teacher, Dr. Osawa taught private piano lessons at many schools, including The Park School of Baltimore and Garrison Forest School in Maryland. She has served as an adjudicator for many competitions such as Peabody Preparatory Junior Concerto Competition and MTNA Piano competition. She currently teaches privately in her home studio in McLean, Virginia.
Childhood
In the 1970s in Japan, having a piano at home and taking lessons became proof of a wealthy life. Everybody was taking piano lessons when I was growing up. There were so many more students than teachers that practically anybody could be a piano teacher with a little knowledge.
My mother, who wished that she could have taken piano lessons as a child, often listened to recordings of classical music such as Mozart and Beethoven sonatas. I remember that she had recordings of Arthur Rubinstein, Horowitz, Dinu Lipati, and Ingrid Haebler!
According to my mother, I asked her for piano lessons when I was about to turn 4 years old. I got my wish! When I was 5 years old, I switched to a teacher who had just returned to Japan from studying in France for a few years. There were only a few teachers who had studied abroad at that time and among them, France was very unusual. My teacher was very sensitive to tone colors and taught me how to use my wrists and arms. At that time, “high finger technique” which was mainly taught in Japan.
Childhood Piano Lessons
Lessons were focused on accuracy not so much on creativity. I remember him talking about tone colors. He also taught me to play with flat fingers like Horowitz, (which I thought was so cool!) I don’t remember him talking about the character of pieces much. I was expected to learn my assigned pieces in the first week. By the second week, I would have them memorized.
Hanon, Czerny, and Burgmuller op.100, (with the exception of Kabalevsky’s children pieces which I also learned), were standard repertoire with many teachers. After completing all the Burgmuller Op.100 pieces, I moved on to Sonatinas and Bach.
During Covid, I had a chance to get to know many active piano teachers in Japan through online meetings and I surprisingly discovered that these are still standard procedures with many teachers there. Even professional piano concert programs were focused on classical period and some romantic composers. So I was exposed to a very limited repertoire growing up. I had never heard of Bartok until I was in college!
Theory wasn’t taught in my lessons and my teacher recommended that I take a composition class. I tried for maybe 6 months or so but didn’t like the class because at the age of 7, I felt like I was already behind everyone else and I discontinued. That was the only time I studied theory before going to college.
I wish I had had a chance to study French pieces with the teacher but I stopped taking lessons from him when I was 12 years old. I stopped taking piano lessons all together soon after I turned 13 years old until high school when I resumed my lessons with a teacher in America.
Piano Teaching and Professional Involvement
“I love witnessing students’ “a-ha” moments. I would like to be a teacher who can provide tools and skills that will help students to eventually teach themselves.” Ruriko’s motto for this year is “Expanding My Comfort Zone”! She extended her teacher hours by 50% from last year. Her plan is to expand my students’ repertoire list and hopefully enter her students in festivals she hasn’t participated in yet.
Ruriko loves exploring and producing the wide range of sounds and colors that are available at the piano. “As a pianist, I’m lucky to have an endless repertoire. Additionally, pianists get to play lots of different pianos (which can be scary sometimes) and I have experienced playing some amazing pianos that I would never be able to afford!”
The Northern Virginia Music Teachers Association is a valuable resource to Ruriko. She notes, “There are so many wonderful teachers and musicians who keep inspiring me to learn more and expand my comfort zone. Also, I have learned the business aspect of how to run my private piano studio from other members.” Her best advice to new members is: “ Don’t be afraid and enter your students to the NVMTA events. It took me so long to enter my students because I had a very small studio for a long time, but I wish I had done it sooner!”
Ruriko is in her 3rd year of co-chairing the Bach/Baroque Competition and Festival. I am in charge of organizing the honors recital but our committee works closely together and we enjoy having a great number of participants. She also serves as a Member-at-large on the Executive Committee.
Personal Life and Projects
When she is not teaching or practicing, Ruriko enjoys reading, baking, and playing basketball with my husband and son. Baking is her outlet for de-stressing. She likes to try out all sorts of recipes, but recently, she sticks mostly to healthy recipes. One year, Ruriko posted recordings regularly on Instagram as a way to motivate herself to practice more consistently. She said, “I picked a piece (either new or old) that I thought I could learn up to a decent level in a week then I posted the result. It was a great project!”
Congratulations to Ruriko for being the Spotlight Teacher of the month! We appreciate your contributions to Northern Virginia Music Teachers Association!
