Music, comedy, cuisine – The Second City’s Ayaka Kinugawa can roll with it all!

Ayaka Kinugawa is a Japanese musician based in Toronto who is actively involved in the comedy scene. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz, a diploma in Classical Music, and composes music for short films, YouTubers, and a hip-hop project called Kokophonix. She is also a long-time member and musical director for The Second City.  

Before entering the music scene professionally, Ayaka was a university student who finished her ESL courses prior to entering the music department. While she was curious and passionate about music, she did not believe that it would one day become her life-long career. “When I graduated from university, I was just trying to make a living at my restaurant job when someone from school approached me saying they wanted me to come on tour with them, so I quit my job and went on the tour with a reggae band,” she says. “When I was on tour, music schools started asking me if I wanted to teach piano, and the university I went to wanted to hire me to be an accompanist for choirs as well as jazz vocal ensembles, so it all happened naturally,” says Ayaka. “Because I learned classical music, jazz and was willing to learn any genre, it led me to those jobs, and I’m so thankful to my younger self for always trying new things.” 

Ayaka started working as a musical director for The Second City in 2013. One of her fondest memories as musical director is when she joined the Bob Curry Fellowship: a ten-week program that offers up to 16 fellowships to qualifying actors and improvisers from diverse multicultural backgrounds. “They always cast me as musical director for their shows. One year I was on stage performing and I had this one sketch, a monologue about me being a plastic bottle, but placed in a compost bin,” she recalls. “The whole message of it was supposed to remind people to recycle and create less waste, but also, the metaphor was about death. Plastic cannot die because it is plastic; it’s going to live for a long time. But because there is death, life is beautiful because there is an end to it, so we have to enjoy every moment. I was alone on stage with a plastic bottle on my head. I wanted to turn a dark theme into something laughable, so it would give people a chance to think about it in a completely different perspective. I believe that’s the power of comedy, and I felt I succeeded that day.”  

Ayaka has accomplished many great things during her years of being a musical director. In 2016, she and six other Second City cast members travelled to Washington, DC, to perform their production of Unelectable You at the Kennedy Center. “It was part of a U.S. tour where we went to 22 states in 2 months. I learned so much about American politics, geography, culture and of course, food! I also learned that performing at the Kennedy Centre is prestigious and thought, I can finally tell my family in Japan I did something they can be proud of.”    

Ayaka has also provided musical direction for two award-winning shows, Tita Jokes by Tita Collective and Extravaganza Eleganza, the 2018 Canadian Comedy Award for Best Live Production. She has also been featured in a Japanese short documentary. “A film crew came all the way from Japan to follow me everywhere for a few days. I was very honoured and proud to be a part of it, and now my mother can understand what I do in Canada.”

Aside from her work at Second City, Ayaka enjoys rocking out to dance music on stage. “I love the type of music that can make people dance,” she says. “When you’re in a band performing on stage, and you see people dancing, singing, having fun, it really is an amazing feeling.”

Currently because of the long-lasting COVID-19 pandemic, all live stage productions have been canceled. However, Ayaka still manages to keep herself busy throughout these strange, unprecedented times. In September 2020, she partnered with Bad Dog Comedy TV and started her own YouTube series called Ayaka’s Kitchen. 

“Ayaka’s Kitchen is an online show where I invite guests, and the guests introduce their dish. It can be anything from their culture or childhood, and I use that ingredient to roll sushi live on the internet,” she says. “While rolling the sushi, I ask the guest questions about their background, culture, and preferred cuisine. Then I eat the sushi, and sometimes it’s great because I get to combine their culture with my Japanese heritage and get an unexpectedly delicious sushi roll;  and other times you get things that taste like a joke, and we laugh at it. It’s a comedy show afterall,” she says. “You never know what life brings you. My restaurant job became very handy to create this show. I did not like my kitchen job, but I learned a lot from it, and now I am having a lot of fun rolling sushi live on YouTube.”

As an experienced performer reflecting on her long years at The Second City, Ayaka’s advice to new performers in the industry is to “know who you are. When I started out as a new musician, I was still trying to figure out who I was, and I didn’t really think much about it because, at the time, I was so focused on trying to make ends meet,” she says. “I think it’s really important to know who you are and what you want out of life, your goals and priorities, etc, because it will make you not only a better musician but a better person overall.”

Follow Ayaka’s Instagram: @ayaka.kinugawa

© Tamara von Estorff, SesayArts Magazine, 2021