Angela Aki

Angela Aki

Angela Aki (Anjera Aki?), born Kiyomi Aki (Aki Kiyomi) on September 15, 1977, is a singer-songwriter and pianist from Itano, Tokushima, Japan. Aki's father is Japanese and her mother is Italian-American. She is the daughter of Kiyoshi Aki, the owner and co-founder of Aeon Institute of Language Education. This is one of the "Big Four" Eikaiwa (English conversation) schools in Japan. She began to take piano lessons when she was three years old. She lived in Tokushima-shi through sixth grade, and spent her junior high school days in Okayama-shi, Okayama. She moved to Hawaii when she was fifteen years old and graduated from Iolani School. Thus Angela Aki speaks English and Japanese. She got absorbed in music there for four years. Then she went to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and majored in political science.

Beginnings In 1997, she went to a Sarah McLachlan concert at age 18 and felt that she wanted to go into the music world and decided to become a singer-songwriter. In 2000, she originally released an indie's album in the United States, called "These Words," which received much critical acclaim. After graduation from university, she found a job in Washington, D.C. and worked as a secretary. She could not give up her dream of being a singer, however, and quit her job in 2001. She worked as a waitress for 2 dollars 13 cents during the day, and she played songs at night at a nightclub. Aki was briefly married to her first album’s engineer and the co-producer of her first album in Vienna, VA. In 2002, she composed two tracks for "Let It Fall" by Dianne Eclar, a teenage pop singer from the Philippines.

In May 2006, Angela signed with Tofu Records in order to release English singles and albums. Her first release with Tofu was "Kiss Me Good-Bye" as a digital single in the USA, with a slightly altered track list. Later that month she performed the Final Fantasy XII theme song, "Kiss Me Good-Bye" at the premiere PLAY! A Video Game Symphony concert in Chicago on May 27, 2006. With orchestral backup, she played piano and sang the English lyrics, which she had written herself. She also performed a cover version of "Eyes On Me", the theme song of Final Fantasy VIII, with her piano accompaniment. Angela Aki was chosen to sing Bob Dylan's "Knockin On Heaven's Door" with her original Japanese lyrics for the movie "Heaven's Door" and was chosen to write and perform the theme song titled “Ai no Kisetsu” for the NHK morning drama “Tsubasa” broadcast from March 30, 2009.