Sarah Kang Album Release Show w/ Takahiro Izumikawa

Sarah Kang is a NYC-based singer-songwriter, whose genre is a seamless blend of jazz, R&B, and pop paired with thoughtful lyricism and warm, cozy vocals. Born in South Korea and raised in LA, Chicago, and Dallas, she grew up playing the piano and the french horn but never imagined she'd ever become a professional musician. Being raised in an immigrant family, a creative career was never presented to her as a real possibility - only a pipe dream. However, with the encouragement of her husband and friends in 2017, she quit her job as a music teacher and took the jump into full-time music. She released her EP "One", funded by a Kickstarter campaign, in 2019 with collaborators Takahiro Izumikawa, Dan Song, and Andrew Kim. In 2020, she challenged herself to release a song every month, and that July, she released her most well-known song to date called "Summer Is for Falling in Love", which has been featured in Nespresso, Uniqlo, LG advertisements as well as Korean dramas. She released her second EP "maybe i'm better now" in 2021 with her producer and friend Patrick Hizon. Sarah often describes herself as someone who is perpetually nostalgic, sometimes preemptively nostalgic for moments that haven’t even passed yet. This results in a sort of timelessness in her songwriting, which evoke memories, tell intimate stories, and remind us of the finiteness of life, but also of hope for the future. She hopes that her music helps listeners to be fully present in the small moments that make life beautiful, like a sunset, or holding someone you love. This year, she is releasing her first full-length album called "how i remember", which explores these themes of nostalgia, time passing, and finding the strength and hope to carry on.

Takahiro Izumikawa is a highly sought-after pianist, keyboardist, arranger, and producer born and raised in Japan. His style has its roots in jazz but incorporates hip-hop, R&B, gospel, and traditional Japanese melodies. He released his first piano solo album in 2014, which was sponsored by Kawai Musical Instruments. He moved to New York City later that year to further his music career. Since then, he has worked with well-known hip hop artists such as Smif&Wessun, Kool Keith, Black Moon, and Smoke DZA. He has also worked with Grammy Award winning musicians Maurice Brown (trumpet player for Anderson .Paak), Jermaine Holmes (vocalist for D’Angelo), Daru Jones (drummer), Mononeon (bassist), Marcus Machado (guitarist), and Timothy Bloom (vocalist). Takahiro’s latest albums include "Life is Your Thoughts", released through major label Ropeadope in April 2020, and "Outage", a solo piano album released in January 2021. He has also released a series of chill hop tracks featuring guest vocalists like Suran under the name “Hedge Hop”.