The Kawai Piano Company of Japan has one of the longest and storied history’s in the piano world.  Kawai’s founder, Kiochi Kawai, began his career as one of Yamaha’s first piano engineers and designers, and was widely credited with being one of the original and most important mechanical geniuses of the Japanese piano industry.  He would build his young company into one of the largest producers of pianos in the world, and by the time his son Shigeru took over, Kawai was a dominant and highly regarded maker of home and school pianos.  However, as Shigeru continued to grow the Kawai Company throughout the 20th century into an institutional powerhouse, Japan’s absense from the world’s concert stages began to look more and more conspicuous.  Having achieved so much already, Kawai set out to change how Japanese pianos were perceived by the elite performers of the day.

The Shigeru Kawai piano began with the collection of the finest woods, veneers and tools.  A separate workshop was created to house the project, and a mere 12 Master Piano Artisans (MPA) were assembled to begin the task of creating Japan’s premiere piano.  Using the most expensive bridge construction, the oldest spruce available, the hardest and thickest rim ever designed in Japan, handwound bass strings, and the finest hand-packed hammers ever devised, the Shigeru Kawai piano was born.  Relentlessly obsessive over the smallest detail, Shigeru’s are 100% hand-made pianos, and are produced in very limited quantities of 200 or fewer annually.  They are now universally recognized as the highest achieving Japanese piano every created, and have commandingly made it on to hundreds of stages around the world. 

Click here to read about Burlington Performing Arts Centre and their quest for a concert grand, and there decision to select Shigeru Kawai.