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Rema Hasumi: Finding Inspiration and Connection in Music and Motherhood

by Christopher Pelham | Sept 3, 2025 | Music

Photo © by Dirk Verhe

Rema Hasumi’s music rises to higher ground, but it navigates deep and turbulent waters to get there. That journey has taken on new dimensions in recent years, as her journey through motherhood has reshaped both her life and art.

When tenor saxophonist Ayumi Ishito, whom I had invited to lead a show at CRS, suggested she play with Rema and percussionist Yuko Togami—neither of whom I knew at the time—I looked them up. I noticed that acclaimed vocalist Jen Shyu, with whom I’d been working for several years, had once invited Rema to present the solo work The Patterns of Duplicity in Shyu’s “Solo Rites” concert series. 

Listening to some of Rema’s music, I was captivated. “Monument Eternal” from her third album Abiding Dawn struck me as a musical evocation of Genesis, giving shape to the inky void, turning to the light: 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,” and there was light.” 

I wasn’t far off. I soon learned that Rema’s title came from Alice Coltrane’s spiritual memoir of the same name. As Ashley Kahn writes in his foreword to the book’s new edition, Coltrane’s path “from darkness to light, from sacrifice to physical and spiritual well-being” embodies “an abiding sense of discovery, divine bliss, and individual purpose.” Coltrane herself described it as “based upon the soul’s realizations in Absolute Consciousness and its spiritual relationships with the Supreme One.” Rema sites Coltrane as one of her key influences and sometimes performs her compositions, such this one:

Listening to “Monument Eternal” alongside Coltrane’s words, I heard music that acknowledges darkness and chaos yet folds them into a unifying symphony, as if even the most discordant moments cannot help but point us back to love’s presence. Years later, Rema would take that same vision further, exploring the profound changes of motherhood and creating music that seeks transcendence through intimate transformation and uncensored observation.

An experimental pianist, vocalist, producer, and writer based in Brooklyn, Rema was born in 1983 in Fukuoka, Japan. She moved to the United States in 2002 to pursue music, after more than a decade of classical piano training and countless hours immersed in her parents’ audiophile record collection. By the late 2000s, she had begun performing widely across New York, the U.S., and Asia, earning the respect of her peers. In 2009, she was named one of four finalists in the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Pianist Competition at the Kennedy Center. Drawing on Kenji Miyazawa’s 1925 poem Spring and Asura, Hasumi set the text in multiple languages, probing the unique musical ideas each one carried.

Rema also worked extensively as both pianist and vocalist in other projects. She collaborated with saxophonist Darius Jones on Alice Coltrane’s music and sang in guitarist Todd Neufeld’s two-drummer group. Her own trio premiered in June 2015 with two nights in New York, featuring her original compositions for piano and voice performed alongside Randy Peterson and Masa Kamaguchi.

Yet after such a strong start, her career seemed to lose momentum. I wondered why.

The answer was both ordinary and profound: life intervened. Rema had a child, went through a divorce, and began sharing custody. Working full-time as a translator while co-parenting her son left little space for music. When she did perform, it no longer always brought the same satisfaction. At one point, she even considered stepping away altogether.

I felt her talent and passion were too vital to vanish, and I encouraged her to keep going. Everyone’s inspiration and gifts matter; we owe it to ourselves and each other to prevent them from slipping through the cracks.

Rema herself was searching for a new direction. She began layering her free piano improvisations with composed and improvised synth sounds, collaging textures that evoked a more meditative, introspective sonic landscape. What she longed for were improvisational partners willing to join her on this path.

Flutist Cheryl Pyle—who had collaborated remotely with Rema on “Musique Libre Femmes” during the pandemic—attended Ayumi, Rema, and Yuko’s show at CRS, where Cheryl and Rema actually met in person for the first time.

Afterward, Cheryl, Rema, and Yuko decided to perform as a trio, and I presented them several times at CRS. Playing with a shared intention, they created an immediate chemistry, listening to the room and allowing space for the music to reverberate. Last December, Rema returned to her long-standing trio, Oto Mugen (Adam Lane on acoustic bass and Randy Peterson on drums), bringing her new ideas into Crossing Boundaries Concert Series vol. 23: Unfolding Circle at the Jazz Gallery.

At the same time, she was developing what would become her fourth album, Mothers. Constrained by time and competing financial responsibilities, she applied for a production grant and was rejected. She wondered whether she could finish it. CRS again stepped in to assist her, this time providing a production grant to get her across the finish line. The album was released on July 1 of this year.

Gestating and delivering this album was truly a labor of love. Rema began recording Mothers in the fall of 2023, six years into her journey as a mother artist. She wanted to create an album dedicated to the collective experience of motherhood, especially that of creatives, to shed light on the bewildering physical, emotional, and social changes women navigate in the process of becoming mothers.

Each track explores a distinct emotional landscape yet shares excerpts from a single piano improvisation session, which runs like an undercurrent throughout the album. Around this anchor, she collaged improvisations on synthesizer, piano, and voice, with contributions from Austin White on electric bass and synth for three tracks. The result is a series of layered soundscapes, mixed to offer a three-dimensional listening experience that reflects the ongoing, dynamic nature of motherhood.

The album is available for digital purchase and streaming on Bandcamp and other major streaming platforms (Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and more).

Introducing the project, she wrote,

In my journey, I’ve felt so lost and misunderstood that I ended up isolating myself from the music world. I was on the verge of giving up on music entirely. It seemed to me that the only way to cope with the grief of losing what I had pre-birth was to create music that most honestly speaks the truth of what I am living through. My deepest desire, since the day I became a mother, has been to protect my child’s well-being while also holding space for my music: my other beloved child.

Mothers reflects on the journeys of women striving to protect their creative paths while navigating the emotions of parenting and redefining their identities.

Gracing the cover of the album is a photo by artist Aline Müller (Brazil/USA) of a pregnant woman sunbathing on an otherwise empty beach, her curves echoed by the curves of the shoreline. The photo captures the album’s sonic embrace of maternal identity as both a creative and spiritual journey. 

Rema introduced me to Aline, who later joined the LIFE IS ART MOTHERHOOD IS ART exhibition, which I curated and first presented at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York, where Rema performed among the photographic works. Aline’s portraits of mothers at different stages—emerging from rivers, beaches, and showers with goddess-like radiance—reveal the mystical within everyday moments of care, moments of joyous presence. Her images refuse to pose or prettify; instead, they highlight curves, fluids, gestures, the small and the menial, all that women’s lives often conceal. With her generous, almost metaphysical gaze, she documents maternal reality in its fullness. This fullness is also what Rema sought to channel in Mothers.

Photo © by Christopher Pelham

With the album complete, I interviewed Rema about her experiences as a mother artist and her creative process.

Chris: Why did you decide to make this album?

Rema: I was searching for a way to connect with myself and with the people around me. Going through a divorce and raising a young child, it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to stay actively involved in the music scene. I often felt misunderstood, and I carried a sense of guilt whenever I had to turn down invitations from other musicians to collaborate or perform. It just didn’t make sense to take a hundred-dollar gig when I had to pay for a babysitter and taxi fares (my gear is heavy). I was exhausted from working day and night as a translator, navigating the complexities of first-time parenting, and trying to ensure a stable, comfortable life for my child and myself. 

Through all this, I began to feel a growing need to reevaluate my relationship with music—what I wanted to express through it and how I wanted to connect with others. I realized I had to approach music differently than I had before, because the way I used to engage with it no longer aligned with who I was becoming. I didn’t want to confine myself to the framework I had set decades earlier. In short, I wanted to create music in the way that I had never done before, and have the music translate the unspoken explanations to my fellow musicians and artists. 

Chris: You write that, “The music [on your new album] represents the journey of mothers striving to protect their creative paths while navigating the deep emotions that come with parenting and the process of redefining their identities.” What additional challenges has having a child created in your artistic life?

Rema: Having a child has definitely made me a happier person, but in some ways, it has also made me more sensitive. I believe a mother’s love can feel deeply vulnerable. You pour love into your child and care for them day after day, sometimes experiencing the highest and lowest emotions within a single day. The time you spend with your child feels both precious and mundane. Wavering between the dichotomy, you still find yourself wanting to protect those moments because the beauty and innocence of childhood are truly extraordinary. In a world with so much violence and atrocity, the pure joy and freedom children express feels like the closest thing to the humanity we long for. Holding on to that innocence while also protecting it takes an incredible amount of energy and focus. This has been a challenge for me, as I’m often so exhausted by the evening that I absolutely have no energy left to work on music most days. 

Chris: How do you navigate time — fragmented time, stolen time, interrupted time — in your practice?

Rema: I do feel my time gets fragmented and interrupted, but never stolen. These aren’t stolen moments because they’re moments poured into love. Through the season of motherhood, I’ve learned to let go of certain things. I allowed myself to accept that I can’t do everything perfectly, and that I’m not able to show up for everyone and everything. I might miss some opportunities, and that’s okay. It took me almost two years to finish an album, and that’s okay, too. I made it a priority to be gentle with myself and to stay patient with my journey.   

Chris: Do you find there is a tension between the solitude that art sometimes demands and the relationality that motherhood insists upon?

Rema: Yes, it’s incredibly difficult to find the solitude needed to create something meaningful when you have parental responsibilities. But when I look at it from another angle, I feel that motherhood brought a different kind of solitude. It was a quieter, more inward space that helped me clarify the direction I wanted to take. Motherhood brought me to a vantage point in a way, where I am able to see my creative journey from a much bigger perspective. The solitude gave me the space to slow down, reflect, and begin moving in a new direction.

Chris: Mothers often speak of deep emotions — and sometimes complex or conflicting feelings — that come with parenting. Can you speak to that complexity and what exactly you wanted to explore or convey about it in this music?

Rema: I became a single mother right around the time the pandemic started. Navigating the pandemic with a young child, I was in survival mode for a long time. Although I have a strong co-parenting relationship, it was still an incredibly challenging time. Throughout those years, my son and I lived in the pandemic “bubble” that we formed to protect ourselves, and in a mother-and-child “bubble” that naturally formed around us. These bubbles felt like an endless season that I would never be able to get out of, but it also felt like a sacred space and time that we were blessed with. I cherished that season and dreaded it at the same time. I felt like I was being left behind by the rest of the world, and I felt guilty for not playing music enough or not accomplishing enough. I was constantly going back and forth between the conflicting feelings: the deep joy of being a mother and the fear of not being/doing enough. Writing music for Mothers was a healing process that allowed me to come to terms with all the emotions I was experiencing. 

Chris: Are there narratives or myths about motherhood, or about motherhood and creativity, that you have had to unlearn or that you want to push back against in your life as an artist or in this music?

Rema: I carried a deep fear about becoming a mother, because I believed that the creativity I had would be diminished once I became a mother. That might be a myth that I created in my own head. I was scared of losing myself in the process, and of disappointing those around me by failing to meet their expectations. I remember feeling that I wanted to prove myself wrong by accomplishing something meaningful even after I birthed my child. It’s the very experience of raising a child that broke me free from the myth. I’ve learned to let my creativity thrive in more fluid and gentle ways, without having rigid expectations around it. 

Chris: You’ve created and structured this album in a very interesting way, breaking one long piano improvisation into separate tracks and collaging other elements on top of those fragments. Where did the inspiration for creating and structuring the album this way come from?

Rema: Free improvisation has been my main focus for the past decade. I don’t really consider myself a composer, because a large part of my approach to music is spontaneous and intuitive. It mostly feels like I’m simply there to help music come into being. I began the process of making music for Mothers by recording free improvisations on piano, because I wanted the piano parts to serve as a sort of anchor that held the music together. The entire process was more like making a series of collage works. I allowed myself to really take time in finishing each piece, as I’ve always wanted to try making music in the way painters make their art. 

Chris: How did you name the tracks? And do you think of each track as exploring a particular, nameable emotion? Or how do you think of each track?

Rema: All of the track titles represent different moments I encountered in motherhood. “Yellow Petals in My Palms,” for example, comes from a memory when my son picked petals from a wild flower and released them in my palms. “Your World Fills Mine” is about feeling so emotionally full from experiencing the expansive, illuminating energy my child emanates. 

Chris: What led you to start exploring and using synth sounds more in the first place? 

Rema: I started exploring the world of synthesizers initially because it was becoming harder and harder to find opportunities to perform on a piano. Several venues were closing down around that time, and there were only a few places that had a piano, so I started playing synthesizers to fill the gap. There were a few albums that amplified my love for the sound of organ and synthesizers: Alice Coltrane’s World Galaxy, Paul Bley/Annette Peacock’s Dual Unity, and Terry Riley’s Shri Camel.

Chris: Where do you want to go from here with this album and with your creative life?

Rema: I’ve been in the NYC jazz community for a long time, and I love playing free improvisation. However, I often felt it was a challenge to connect with people outside of the community through the music. Over the years, I’ve become more interested in creating music that can possibly reach a wider audience. I wanted to make music that people resonate with and relate to. For a long time, I felt like I had to keep playing so-called jazz because that’s what I studied in college, but I’m glad that I was able to liberate myself from that preconception. This is my first time releasing music on streaming platforms, and I’m excited to have it available and accessible to people around the world.  

Chris: What gestures of care or solidarity have you received (or offered) that made art-making possible during motherhood?

Rema: I don’t think it’s typically a norm for musicians to talk about parenthood. I wish there were more conversations around that, but I just haven’t encountered many. I’ve had a hard time explaining to fellow musicians why it’s difficult for me to participate in sessions or gigs, and I’ve felt misunderstood and isolated as a result. When I turn down gigs, it’s usually because I can’t afford to lose my work hours or to find a babysitter. It doesn’t seem to me that many musicians understand or care about this kind of stuff, and I don’t expect them to. The feeling of not being understood is probably something I’ve struggled with the most. I’ve lost friends and collaborators along the way because of it, but I’ve come to accept that. Everyone is dealing with their own challenges, and as we grow older, our life paths naturally begin to diverge.

Chris: Have you found models—historical or contemporary—for integrating motherhood and artistry? Or have you had to invent your own?

Rema: I more or less had to create my own approach. But I often think about Alice Coltrane and how she cared for four young children after John’s death, and still managed to record so many great albums.

Chris: What advice would you offer to other artist mothers and to female artists and their partners who may be considering having children?

Rema: Having children is a beautiful and rewarding experience, but there will always be challenges along the way. Daycare, afterschool programs, and summer camps are all very expensive, so it’s a good idea to plan ahead and make sure that you’re in the right place financially. It is a choice you make for your life, and you’ll definitely need to weigh your options to determine the right direction. Personally, having my son was the best thing that’s ever happened in my life.  

I am grateful for having gotten to know Rema and to have played some role in her journey. Like the other mother artists with whom I have been working lately, she has shown me that mothers can and do continue to be vital creators while parenting. To do so, given the time and financial constraints of parenting, mothers must juggle responsibilities constantly and plan carefully, as best they can. But with self-reflection, the acts of parenting and creating can even be mutually nurturing. In Rema’s case, the challenges and experiences of motherhood directly inspired a period of profound personal and artistic transformation and growth, giving birth to what is arguably her most creative and beautiful album yet. 

You can listen to and purchase Rema’s new album, Mothers, here (as well as on Apple Music, etc.):

You can learn more about Rema Hasumi on her website:

http://rema-hasumi.com

And follow her on Instagram and Threads at:

@remahasumi