Shigeo Sekito

Japanese Electronic Organ Musician

Sekitō Shigeo (関藤繁生, Year Active --> 1967 - 2021) was a Japanese electone player. In the mid-1970s he recorded a four-LP album set titled Special Sound Series for Nippon Columbia. He changed his name to Akisino Ken after his piano debut, and was active until his death. He died in June 2021 from Colorectal Cancer. Often called as a Superstar or Genius of Electone, Shigeo Sekito was widely recognized as a specially gifted and outstanding energetic Electone player in the Electone community. Sekitō's parents were both primary-school teachers, and he had two sisters who were both are pianists. He learned piano since infancy, and began to compose at the age of 17. He majored in composition in Osaka Education College, from Osaka Kyoiku University's Special Music Course Composition Department. Later, he was charmed with the new instrument called Yamaha Electone, which was Yamaha's newly debut electronic transistor organs in the late 1950s (1958-1959) and the 1960s. A while later, he made his debut at the 1967 Electone Grand Prix. Since his debut, the composer and musician has remarkably applied his abundant talents to Electone. His fresh, energetic, rhytmic and sometimes humorous style of playing is attracting a growing number of fans and enthusiasts to try and play Electone, and expected to develop new possibilities in Electone world. He was actively engaged in numerous concerts and recordings, both at home and abroad, practicing up to 14 to 15 hours a day. Sekito's music is what most described as "careful as the devil and daring as the angel itself". His selection of tone color, certainly of setting tones and miraculously manipulation of tones and bound to make us find ourselves all of a sudden pulled back to our past inner experiences or thrown away into the opened future cosmic space. This is indeed, a demonic work and may also as a result from the sweetness and purity of the angelic whisperings. According to the New Straits Times, Sekitō had released ten albums by 1991 and averaged two concerts per month, using the rest of his time to teach piano to students. In 1991, Sekitō performed arrangements of works by Mozart and Beethoven on his EL 90 Electone at the World Trade Center, Kuala Lumpur. Sekitō began the concert by playing his own arrangement of the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo.