Animenz
One of the most famous and impactful Anime Pianist within the community.
Credit: Steinway & Animenz
Animenz is a classically-trained German-Chinese Anime Pianist. He was born on March 17, 1991, in Germany after his parents immigrated from China (Animenz Piano Sheets, 2013). Animenz started piano lessons at the age of six and entered his first piano competition at seven (Animenz Piano Sheets, 2013). Growing up, Animenz had a fascination with Anime and Anime Music. By the age of fifteen, his interest in anime had grown and after watching an anime with a beautiful background piano piece, he went online to see if there was any sheet music available (Animenz Piano Sheets, 2013). Animenz found a website titled “Josh’s Anime Piano Sheet Database” which contained the piece he was looking for (Animenz Piano Sheets, 2013). However, many other anime songs lacked piano sheet music so Animenz took it upon himself to fill this gap (Animenz Piano Sheets, 2013).
Animenz would play and upload his arrangements to his YouTube channel to promote his WordPress site which contained a database of his arrangements (Animenz Piano Sheets, 2013). His first video was uploaded to YouTube on January 14, 2010, and was an arrangement of Hikari no Senritsu (Animenz Piano Sheets, 2010).
When deciding his alias, he stated that:
“It was decided from the very beginning that my alias should be associated with “Anime” in some way, since I have always loved watching it. In the end, I created a name where it starts with the letter “A” and ends with letter “Z”, representing the “A to Z of music”, where the music is encompassing everything.”
- Animenz 2024 (Email Interview)
Animenz would enter and win several piano competitions and make multiple concerto appearances (Steinway & Sons, n.d). For his undergraduate degree, Animenz chose to study at Hochschule für Musik and Theater Rostock (Steinway & Sons, n.d). In 2017, he earned his Bachelor’s degree (Animenz, 2016).
Since his debut performance in Singapore in 2014, Animenz has gone on to give more than 100 live performances, concerts and masterclasses worldwide (Animenz, n.d). In 2019, Animenz became a registered Steinway artist and by 2022, he surpassed 2 million subscribers on YouTube (Animenz, n.d). To date, Animenz has created over 200 piano arrangements of anime music (Animenz, n.d).
In 2019, Animenz moved to Japan to learn more about Japanese music and pop culture (Animenz, n.d). Animenz continues to arrange anime piano music and perform for audiences to this day.
"My goal is to transform contemporary pop music into sophisticated piano arrangements, where it can be enjoyed in even the greatest classical music halls in the world.”
- Animenz 2024 (Email Interview)