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Biography (E)
Chikako Nishikawa was born in Kyoto, Japan, and has lived in Italy since 2016.
She studied harpsichord at Doshisha Women's College in Kyoto, where she obtained a Bachelor of Music. She continued her studies at the Musikhochschule in Zurich (harpsichord and organ) and at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the Netherlands (organ).
In 2008, she continued her studies in Freiburg with Maurizio Croci at the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in 2010 and a Master of Arts in Concert Performance in 2012. She was then inspired by Stefano Molardi in Lugano for two years.
Until 2016, she was organist at the church of Saints-Pierre-et-Paul in Marly, at the church of St Joseph in Schmitten and at the church of St Maurice in Fribourg.
She was a finalist in the following international organ competitions: 2nd and 3rd International Organ Competition 'Agati-Tronci' 2013 and 2014, 4th International Organ Competition 'Organ Storici del Basso Friuli' 2014 and 1st International Organ Competition 'Organ Antico in Ticino' 2017 on the first historical Italian organs.
She also studied harpsichord with Fabio Bonizzoni at the Conservatorio di Novara in Italy (Level II Academic Diploma, 2020), in 2017-2018 at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Murcia (Spain) and did an internship as harpsichord repeater in the summer semester of 2019 at the Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo Porto (Portugal) as an Erasmus+ exchange.
In 2022-2023, she studied organ, with a focus on early music, with Federico Del Sordo at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome (Post-Gradum Course).