Akiko Yano was born in Tokyo and raised in Aomori, Japan. She started playing piano at the age of three, and to take on her musical career, she moved to Tokyo alone when she was fifteen, entering into Aoyama Gakuin High School. Since then, she started doing sessions at jazz clubs, and with her skillful piano, she became popular among other musicians. Around 1972, she started playing as a member for a band with roots in Tin Pan Alley.

Akiko recorded her debut album, “Japanese Girl”, largely in Los Angeles with Lowell George and Little Feat. When it was released in 1976 many reputed her to be a “girl with a musical wonder.”

She then began collaborating with Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). They continued to play on her next recording projects and invited Akiko to join them on two of their worldwide tours. Akiko expanded her musical collaborations with YMO on her subsequent CD releases.

Akiko continued to release CDs joined by JAPAN and Pat Metheny and performed on albums by Thomas Dolby and other artists. In 1990 she relocated to New York where she collaborated and toured with some of the world's most renowned musicians including The Chieftains, Toninho Horta and Jeff Bova on his project THE HAMMONDS.

Akiko’s credits extend beyond her album projects. The famed Japanese animation film company, Studio Ghibli, who are known for works such as “Princess Mononoke” and “Spirited Away”, showcased her. Akiko composed the music for the film "My Neighbors The Yamadas”, and performed the sound effects using only her voice for two short films "Yadosagashi" and "Mizugumo Monmon" by animation director, Hayao Miyazaki. Both films were shown at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo. More recently in 2008, Akiko performed as a voiceover actress on “Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea” as Ponyo’s sisters. In addition, Akiko composed music for Toei's animated feature, "Atashin'chi," and piano-based soundtrack for the film "Tagatameni," featuring actor Tadanobu Asada.

To date, Akiko has released 27 original albums, which 3 albums were released from Nonesuch Records: AKIKO YANO, a compilation album selected by Bob Hurwitz and John Zorn (1990), LOVE LIFE (1993) and PIANO NIGHTLY (1996).

Silent Movies, the new release from guitarist Marc Ribot, finds him taking another surprising step in a career filled with unexpected turns. One might expect a program of solo guitar music from Ribot to be filled with bracing atonality or studies in texture. Instead, Silent Movies is filled with performances of gorgeous contemplation that linger on the mind long after they are over. The album reflects Ribot's fascination with movies and contains pieces intended to function as music for films: some are adaptations of music he has actually written for films, others for classic silent movies that he scored for his personal amusement, still others for films of his own imagination. His goal is to explore, as he says "the strange area between language and spatiality that exists partly in between music and visual image, and partly as a common property of both." Whatever the inspiration, Silent Movies is replete with beautiful melodies and quietly wistful playing of a sort seldom heard from Ribot and delivers a program filled with gentle, haunting songs that evoke the feel of a different time. As he says in the CD's liner notes, the recording project "did indeed have the feeling of having walked backwards into the beautiful frame of a silent movie."

Widely recognized as one of the great guitar slingers, Ribot’s distinctively edgy and impassioned sound can be found recently on albums by such diverse artists as Norah Jones, Allen Toussaint, McCoy Tyner, Marianne Faithful, John Zorn, Shemekia Copeland, Jakob Dylan, Dan Zanes, Joe Henry, Richard Hell, T-Bone Burnett, Jolie Holland, and The Black Keys. He also appears on the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss Grammy Award-winning album Raising Sand and its upcoming follow-up, as well as The Union, the collaboration between Elton John and Leon Russell. He has played on such film scores as the recently released “The Kids are All Right,” “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Walk the Line,” and “The Departed.”

It is on his own albums, however, that Ribot finds his true voice. Performed in complete takes, with only minimal atmospheric overdubs, Silent Movies was partly inspired by his experience preparing for a live accompaniment of the Charlie Chaplin film The Kid at Merkin Concert Hall in January 2010 as part of the New York Guitar Festival. Some tracks were composed for “El General,” Natalia Almada’s documentary film about Plutarco Elías Calles who ruled Mexico with an iron hand from 1924 to1935 and still others for the unreleased movie “Drunk Boat.” All of the compositions were written by Ribot except “Sous le Ciel de Paris,” the title song from the classic French movie by Julien Duvivier that was made a hit by Edith Piaf among many others.

Whatever the inspiration, Silent Movies is replete with beautiful melodies and quietly wistful playing of a sort seldom heard from Ribot. The album is almost a polar opposite of his last release Party Intellectuals (Pi 27) with his band Ceramic Dog, a rock power trio going for it in an all-out sonic assault, and nothing like his last solo recital Exercises in Futility, a study in extended technique for the guitar. Given the luxury of three days in the studio, Ribot delivers a program filled with gentle, haunting songs that evoke the feel of a different time. As he says in the CD’s liner notes, the recording project “did indeed have the feeling of having walked backwards into the beautiful frame of a silent movie.”