Becoming a vocal coach-pianist was destiny for Mutsumi Moteki, who always loved singing and studying languages. She started to learn classical songs in Italian, German, and Japanese by accompanying her friend at Komaba High School in Tokyo, Japan. As a passionate choir girl since the middle school, her dream was to become a choir teacher. However, she majored in piano at Kunitachi College of Music, which had a reputation for its excellent voice program. She was fortunate to be hired as a rehearsal pianist by a voice professor who had just come back from Vienna, where he had studied German Lieder. She was also asked to play for a voice studio, which specialized in French songs because she was one of the few piano students who were studying French language (as well as Italian and German) at the college. Students in the latter studio also sang Japanese songs regularly.

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In 1985, she came to the United States with two suitcases to study vocal accompanying for one year as a non-degree student with the late Dalton Baldwin at Westminster Choir College . Aside from Mr. Baldwin, studying with the late Dr. Glenn Parker and other wonderful teachers inspired her to stay at Westminster for another year and earn a master’s degree. She continued her studies at the University of Michigan with Martin Katz, where she earned her D.M.A. degree. After teaching diction courses at the University of Michigan for two years, she moved to Colorado and taught at the University of Colorado Boulder for 31 years and retired as a Professor Emerita last May.

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Dr. Moteki is passionate about promoting Japanese art songs as well as other East Asian art songs and has given numerous presentations at conferences and other universities. With Dr. Kumiko Shimizu, she has published two volumes of Japanese Art Song Anthology from Classical Vocal Reprints. It is rewarding for her to know that many American singers have been singing Japanese songs using these scores.

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She has been helping singers from the U.S. and other countries with Japanese art song repertoire, and now, the creation of a website that can offer easy access to various resources for Japanese art song is a goal for the next stage of her life. She is available for presentations, workshops, master classes, coaching sessions (online and in-person), and consultation on Japanese art songs as well as the mainstream classical vocal repertoire.