Born in Tokyo, 1961.
Yuki started learning piano at the age of 3. His music education was quite an ordinary until he heard Oscar Peterson when he was 12 years old.This never-heard-of dynamic groove and intricate harmony struck him completely. Since then, he began listening to Jazz intensively, tried to imitate what he heard on the record.
Having nobody around who is aquatinted with Jazz Music, Yuki was completely self-taught for the first 10 years of exposure to Jazz and slowly began to perform at the local restaurants and Jazz clubs.
In 1983 he decided to study at Berklee College of Music to understand what he had been trying to play and what he had been attracted to in this Jazz music.
In Boston, he was exposed to many different music from Bill Evans to Ornette Coleman. Also during this period he met Edward Bedner, a disciple of legendary Margaret Chaloff. With Bedner’s help Yuki almost relearned the piano technique and studied classical music intensively.
After graduation, Yuki started teaching as an Assistant Professor in the Piano Department at Berklee and collaborated with one of the finest musicians around Boston area, as a pianist, arranger and composer. Some of his work, received such reviews by Boston Herald, “Yuki Arimasa is a sensitive accompanist and expressive, imaginative soloist”, by Boston Globe, “Arimasa’s arrangement received the strongest applause”.
After spending 15 years in the U.S. Yuki decided to relocate himself to his home town, Tokyo. Since then he has engaged in numerous of projects by fine musicians around Tokyo area, as well as his own projects with Yuki Arimasa Trio and other various projects of his own.
In 2000, Yuki went back to the academia, started teaching at Senzoku College of Music, which launched, for the first time, 4 year Jazz Education in Japan.
At Senzoku, as a Professor, Yuki initiated the Jazz Program and supervised the whole curriculum until 2025.
His passion for the Jazz education also lead him to conduct workshops and concerts in China, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, that covers most of the Asian Jazz Communities.
As a pianist, composer and arranger, Yuki has been active in performing in and outside of Japan, participating in San Sebastián Jazz Festival, Tokyo-Manila Jazz Festival, and Shanghai tour just to name a few.
In 2016, for the purpose of raising the awareness of Jazz and its creativity, Yuki founded Artist Green. This organization is to create an Artist community where young artists can exchange the ideas, perform together and learn at the various workshops.
Yuki believes that being an artist in the society, artist can contribute in so many different fields, which includes music, education, promotion of the art and all the other field that has not yet been discovered.
With this belief in mind, Yuki continues to explore the music and actively involves in the events that serves for the music and society.