PROFILE
Mamiko Hirai/soprano & Kenji Sano/lute
The Early Music Duet

studied singing with Sachiko Saeki. She gained a musical diploma from Kobe college, where she studied with Kumiko Hata. Since graduating from college, her interests have moved to late renaissance and early baroque music, while she has extended her early music singing research and repertoire to range from 13C medieval music to 18C baroque music. She has given many concerts and made recordings as soloist with early music ensembles in Japan, France and England, and she is now one of the leading early music singers in Japan. She also made highly successful several duo CD album with Kenji Sano. She has also studied with Emma Kirkby, Jessica Cash and Evelyn Tubb.


KENJI SANO began to play guitar as an autodidact at age of 11, later studying with Ichiro Okamoto. In 1974 he went to London to study guitar and early music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He studied guitar with Hector Quine, Buxton Orr and Julian Bream, and lute with Anthony Rooley, Nigel North and Jakob Lindberg. He also studied recorder and viol at the Guildhall School. In 1977 he gained an AGSM diploma with distinction. He is one of the 1978 Young Musicians of Greater London Council. Now he concentrates on the lute and the early guitar, as soloist, accompanist, and continuo-player, giving recitals and making recordings in Japan, France and England, for which he has been awarded many prizes. He teaches at both Osaka College of Music and the early music depertment of Soai University.