Taiko Saito is a marimba and vibraphone player and composer from Sapporo, Japan. She studied with Keiko Abe and David Friedman. Her music draws on classical music, jazz and other influences.
She won the 2005 Concours International de Vibraphone Claude Giot in October, and the 2002 Jazz & Blues Award Berlin, including its audience prize. She took third prize at the World Marimba Competition in Stuttgart in 1996. Her solo-marimba composition Landscape IV, published by Norsk Musikforlag, received the originality prize at the International Marimba Competition in 2004.
Career and projects
Saito studied classical marimba and percussion at Toho School of Music, began improvising and composing in 1997, and has lived in Berlin since 1998. At the Berlin University of the Arts she studied vibraphone and composition with David Friedman. She received the Jazz Award Berlin in 2023 and the German Jazz Award for percussion in 2024.
Her international performing and recording projects include KOKO with Niko Meinhold, Futari with Satoko Fujii, Trio SAN with Fujii and Yuko Oshima, Berlin Mallet Group, TRIO Saito/Roder/Griener, and kokotob. She has appeared as a soloist with the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra and France’s Orchestre d’Auvergne, and teaches masterclasses internationally.
In 2008, coup de baguette commissioned her Hide and Seek for nine percussionists. She belongs to Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra, Potsa Lotsa XL and Hannes Zerbe Jazz Orchestra, and plays a 5.5-octave Marimba Perfection as a Korogi artist.