If the koto has made headway in today's music, if it has grown just a bit out of its traditional Japanese clothes, it is thanks to Kazue Sawaï. Convinced that the instrument is worth more than a place in a museum or traditional music hall, she has taken upon herself to impose the koto in modern settings, from avant-garde concert music to free improvisation. Through the Sawaï Koto Institute in Tokyo, which she co-founded with her husband Tadao Sawaï, she has taught many younger koto improvisers, including Shoko Hikage, Elizabeth Falconer, and Brett Larner. Her discography includes albums released on Japanese, American, and European labels.

Sawaï started koto studies at the age of eight. She graduated from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music after studying with the master Michio Miyagi, designer in the 1920s of the bass koto. Counting 17 strings instead of the traditional 13, the bass koto became her favorite instrument. She began to play professionally in 1978, already alongside her husband, himself a composer of renown although with closer ties to tradition. Her first musical partners included pianist Aki Takahashi and percussionist Sumire Yoshihara. She appeared at the Festival d'Automne in Paris, 1978 and made a few more European apparitions in the next few years. During the 1980s she slowly developed her energetic style.

At the turn of the 1990s, Sawaï began to get noticed by the American avant-garde community. She appeared two years in a row (1989-1990) at the Bang on a Can festival, premiering music by John Zorn, among others. Her arrangement for four bass kotos of John Cage's Three Dances won her international acclaim. For a while she became very active on the free improv front, playing regularly with bassist Tetsu Saitoh, Hideaki Kuribayashi (one of her students), and French saxophonist Michel Doneda. The untimely death of her husband in 1997 brought a hiatus to her career, but by the turn of the millennium she was back to performing and recording. ~ François Couture, Rovi