Junichi Steven Sato

Chicago native Junichi Steven Sato began his piano studies at the age of five.  Although formal studies in theory, harmony, counterpoint, and composition were not begun until the age of 12, he had been writing music since the age of six. His teachers include Vladimir Leyetchkiss, Dmitry Paperno, and Edmund Battersby. He also participated in piano and chamber music masterclasses under full scholarships in the United States and abroad, studying with such artists as John Browning, Arthur Greene, and André Watts. 

Sato has won awards at numerous competitions including the Young Keyboard Artists Association International Piano Competition and the Artists Division of the Society of American Musicians Piano Competition, and was a semifinalist at the 48th Busoni International Piano Competition in Italy. A frequent adjudicator at piano and composition competitions, he served as Chairman of the Jury for the Fifth Këngët e Tokës International Music Competition in Albania, and chaired Illinois State Music Teachers Association's Composition Competition from 2005 to 2007 and Chicago Area Music Teachers Association's Roberta Savler Piano Contest from 2003 to 2012..

In 1995, he founded J. S. Sato Music Editions, a music publishing business that has been gaining worldwide reputation as a publisher of unique and dependable editions. His publications have been highly praised in journals and magazines such as  Clavier,  Piano & Keyboard and 20th-Century Music. Sato's works are performed internationally, some of which have been heard at Ravinia Festival and on National Public Radio.

Sato is currently on the faculty at DePaul University and at Music Makers of Western Springs. His debut compact disc album of his solo piano transcriptions of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue and Liszt's Psalm XIII, as well as a rare Cortot transcription of Franck's Sonata for Piano and Violin was noted as "thrilling; up there with Katsaris and Wild for sheer pianistic derring-do and swirling multi-texturing" by International Piano.