Hideaki Onishi is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore. Originally from Osaka, Japan, Onishi earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in historical musicology at Keio University, Tokyo and a Ph.D. in music theory at the University of Washington, Seattle, studying with Jonathan W. Bernard, John Rahn, and Joël-François Durand. Before joining the Conservatory in 2005, he taught music theory and musicianship at the University of Washington and the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. He has also been a guest lecturer at LaSalle College of the Arts and the School of the Arts (SOTA), Singapore.

Onishi’s research has focused on the theory and analysis of modern music, and he has presented papers on the music of Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti, and Toru Takemitsu in Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. An advocate of Asian contemporary music, he has contributed a chapter on the music of Takemitsu in Music of Japan Today (New Castle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008) and co-translated the bilingual collection of essays Asian Composers in the 20th Century (Tokyo: Japanese Federation of Composers, 2002). His other research interests in this field include pitch-space analysis and the graphical representation of music, and the music of jazz pianist Bill Evans. He is currently conducting an NUS cross-faculty research on the effect of music on the quality of sleep of local elderly people with Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies faculty Moon Fai Chan and N. V. Thayala.

Onishi has also been interested in the theoretical and cultural studies of non-Western music, that of Southeast Asia in particular. He has co-presented a paper on kulintang (the gong and drum ensemble music from the Southern Philippines) with Pamela Costes Onishi in Netherlands and Thailand, and given a lecture in Burma and Indonesia. He is currently co-authoring a chapter on early music education in Burma for Musical Childhoods of the Asia-Pacific (Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, forthcoming 2010) with Kit Young.

Onishi has studied kulintang with Danongan S. Kalanduyan, Kanapia Kalanduyan, and Costes Onishi and performed on numerous occasions, often with the Filipino American Youth Center for Culture and the Arts (FAYCCA), a registered nonprofit organization in Washington State, USA. He served FAYCCA as assistant director until June 2005 and co-produced a CD Tunog PiL-AM with them. Onishi has also taken lessons in Balinese and Javanese gamelan with I Wayan Sadra and Supardi, respectively.

Onishi can be contacted at .

Updated on 01/06/2009