My Story

Drummer/pianist/composer Akihito (Aki) Gorai brings a fresh yet nostalgic vision to the contemporary jazz world. His compositions can inspire a smile or a laugh, a quiet thought or a good cry. Listening to his songs, one would just as easily find themselves sprawled on the couch daydreaming as much as they would dancing around the living room. Inspired by the likes of Ben Wendel, Gerald Clayton, Linda Oh, Ichiko Aoba, Kimishima Ozora, Disasterpeace, and Toe, Aki's style, while cohesive and grounded, is a conglomerate of  many seemingly unrelated genres. Aki's goal in life is to inspire emotion deep within listeners' hearts, as directly as a conversation between old friends.

Born in NYC to Filipino-American & Japanese parents and raised in Harlem, NY, Akihito (Aki) Gorai showed a keen interest in language, sound, and music from an early age. Aki began formal piano training at the age of 6, working with renowned classical pianist, Michiyo Morikawa. At the age of 8, Aki enrolled at the Mannes School of Music Junior Program and quickly became a promising young classical musician. As his musical interests diversified, Aki began studying jazz with renowned Japanese pianist & composer, Eishin Nosé, and was inspired to improvise, write, and create his own music. This initiative drove Aki to experiment with diverse instrumental sounds ranging from guitar, saxophone, flutes, and drums, all the way to traditional percussion, string, and wind instruments from around the world.

After working with renowned percussionist and musical arranger, Satoshi Takeishi, percussion & composition soon became Aki’s primary focus. Aki began performing as a percussionist simultaneously with the distinguished Bronx High School of Science Jazz Band and Bronx High School of Science Concert Band, as well as establishing the first ever Jazz Club on campus, and earning on graduation their first awarded Music Scholarship. Outside of school, Aki worked as percussion accompanist alongside several young jazz and contemporary artists, performing, staging, and recording, in and around the NYC area. This myriad of experience forged a broad expansion of Aki’s musical palette on an exponential scale, with sounds of jazz, rock, film music, big band, classical, and electronic music, influencing his extraordinary compositional sound.

As a rising university undergraduate, Aki was honored to work with and accompany the Jazz Vocal Ensemble at the NYSSMA Winter Conference at the Eastman School of Music, and privileged to learn from and perform with the exceptional educators and fellow artists at the Future Music Project at Carnegie Hall, at the High School Jazz Academy at Lincoln Center, and at the Aspire Summer Music Intensive at Berklee College of Music.

Through his performing and undergraduate career, Aki has had the opportunity to expand his understanding of world musics, performing with Columbia University Lion Dance, studying the shakuhachi with Elizabeth Brown at the Japanese Gagaku/Hogaku Program at Columbia University, shamisen with Sumie Kaneko, gamelan with the Indonesian Gamelan Ensemble at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, tabla with Samir Chatterjee at the Chhandayan Center for Indian Music.

Aki’s extensive music and audio production understanding has profoundly flourished, delivering him the tools, experience, and passion, to produce, devise, record, and communicate, through the immeasurable language of sound and music. Recently graduated from The School of Jazz & Contemporary Music at the College of Performing Arts of the New School, Aki maintains his skills in both production and live stage performance, embodying his childhood promise of success, achievement, and innovation in the field of music.