Piano Transcriptions by Junichi Steven Sato

In 1995 he was inducted into Pi Kappa Lambda, a professional music honor society, and in 1997 he was awarded Indiana University's coveted Performer's Certificate, the school's highest honor. Sato's biographical profile has been included in Marquis Who's Who in America since its 58th edition (2003).

Sato has made several appearances on television and radio programs as both performer and composer. In 1991, Miss America Marjorie Vincent presented him with a music scholarship from the Dolores Kohl Education Foundation and he appeared on WBBM-TV Chicago's Channel 2 News. That year he was also a finalist in the Illinois Young Performers Competition, concerto competition of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He has won awards at numerous competitions such as the Young Keyboard Artists Association International Piano Competition and the Artist's Division of the Society of American Musicians Piano Competition, and was a semifinalist at the 48th Busoni International Piano Competition in Italy. A frequent adjudicator at piano and composition competitions, he co-chairs Chicago Area Music Teachers Association's Roberta Savler Piano Contest, and recently served as chairman of the jury for the Fifth "Këngët e Tokës" International Music Competition in Albania, sponsored in part by the Albanian Ministry of Culture.

In 1995, he founded J. S. Sato Music Editions, a music publishing business that has been gaining worldwide reputation as a publisher of unique and dependable editions. Shortly after he published his own transcription of Liszt's Psalm XIII in 1997, he was invited to give the première of this work for the American Liszt Society Festival. A review in a subsequent issue of Piano & Keyboard magazine declared "[Sato's] transcription of Liszt's Psalm XIII...makes an effective concert piece, at once pianistically idiomatic and dramatically coherent.... The result is a gripping 20 minutes of music...which you might have mistaken for one of Liszt's lost masterpieces for piano in this remarkable (and, happily, very playable) transcription...." His other publications have also been highly praised in Piano & Keyboard as well as in other journals and magazines such as Clavier and 20th-Century Music. Sato's works are performed internationally, some of which have been heard at Ravinia Festival and on National Public Radio.

Sato is currently on the faculty at DePaul University and at Music Makers of Western Springs. His students have won honors in various piano and composition competitions, including the prestigious Music Teachers National Association Composition Contest. In addition to his heavy teaching schedule, he performs regularly, and his collaboration with other artists earned him the words "high level musicianship and ensemble playing" from world-renowned cellist Janos Starker.

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