Life
Grown up in Kobe, Mayako Kubo graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in piano from the Osaka College of Music. She went to Vienna, Austria, in 1972 to study composition with Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Erich Urbanner and Friedrich Cerha as well as music history and philosophy. She completed her composition studies at the University of Arts in Vienna with a Master of Arts degree. In 1980, she continued her studies with Helmut Lachenmann in Hannover and Stuttgart. Her son Florian was born in 1982. Three years later, Kubo settled in Berlin and studied musical sciences with Carl Dahlhaus. She is founding member of the society for contemporary music „ZeitMusik“. Between 1990 and 1994 she worked in Marino, a small city close to Rome, Italy. Since then she has been back in Berlin.
Kubo’s style of composition is based on her classical piano education, the studies at the Institute for Electroacoustic and Experimental Music in Vienna as well as her interaction with other scenic arts such as dance, theater and performance. During the 1990s she moved more towards music theater and developed a very specific, free and expressive sound world for it. „Thirds and street car noises – both are always present.“