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Ayumi Okada

A native of Kyoto, Japan, Ayumi Okada is a New York-based composer, pianist, and educator.

Ayumi is a recipient of the 2019 BMI Jerry Harrington Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Musical Theatre. For her work on a new musical, The Uncivil Ones, she and her collaborator were honored with a Special Mention at the 2019 Women in the Arts & Media Coalition Collaboration Awards. Ayumi is a Mannes Bohuslav Martinů Composition Award winner and a Goberman Prize recipient.

Her concert music has been performed by esteemed ensembles, including Juventas New Music Ensemble, American Wild Ensemble, Listen Closely, Alaria Chamber Ensemble, and A.W. Duo. Recent commissions include a piece for Juventas New Music Ensemble in celebration of the ensemble's 20th Anniversary (2024) and for a project called Lungs of the City: Olmsted's Parks in Music to commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of 19th-century American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (2022). Her solo viola, solo cello, and string orchestra pieces were featured at the 2024 ASTA/SAA National Conference. Ayumi's debut EP, Here, Where The Land Ends And The Sea Begins, and several other piano and chamber pieces are published and available through Abundant Silence.

Her musical theatre songs have been performed across the U.S. and in Japan at renowned venues such as Seishin Chuo Hall, The Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, The DeLUXE Theater, The Duplex, and Feinstein's/54 Below, among others. She has worked for Takarazuka Revue Company in Japan as a co-orchestrator for several shows, including 1789: Les Amants de la Bastille and Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story. On the Zattere, a new musical novel she co-wrote music and lyrics for, premiered in Tokyo in 2022.

As an educator, Ayumi has given lectures through various organizations, including Maestra Music, Musical Theatre Writers Japan, Festival for Creative Pianists, and Jensen Piano & Music Composition Studio. She has also maintained a private piano studio since 2015, teaching in both English and Japanese. She joined Red Leaf Pianoworks, a composers' collective dedicated to creating new piano repertoire, in April 2024.

She holds an MM in Music Composition from Mannes College of Music and an MA in Music Education from Kyoto University of Education. She is a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Advanced Workshop, the Dramatists Guild of America, Local 802, Maestra, and Landscape Music, and is a board member of Festival for Creative Pianists.