<Profile> Mr. Kono was born in 1953, in Japan. After his professional experiences as a keyboard with a Japanese famous pop band since 1974, and as a jazz pianist, playing with Richard Davis and other jazzmen, he has been creating and developing original music since 1991. Since 1992, he has performed over 300 concerts per year, using inactive pianos. Since 1993, Mr. Kono began donating pianos to overseas, such as Kenya (11), South Africa (27), China (6), Israel (8), and Vietnam (3). He also donated about 50 pianos to public halls and nursing homes in Japan. 4,500,000 inactive pianos in Japan Do you know how many pianos are actually played in Japan? There are 6,000,000 pianos in all over Japan, only 1,500,000 pianos are actually played. The rest of them are useless. Mr. Kono started to think like this since the gulf war, almost 10 years ago. He has concentrated on world peace and environmental issues since then. Meanwhile not only thinking, he also wanted to do something. Then he learned about the inactive pianos in Japan. He now spends time reconditioning as many inactive pianos as possible. To start giving concerts to raise fund for piano donation to the facilities for the handicapped, nursing homes in Japan, and the children of the world. Eleven (11) pianos were first donated to Kenya in 1993 and forty-four (44) pianos have been donated to four nations since 1996.	PHOTO: Yasuhiro Kono, a jazz pianist I hope that the peace will come true that everyone in the world is laughing with music.
When I visited South Africa with pianos for donation in 1996, there was "huge welcome ceremony" there. At first, I played several pieces of music with a piano from Japan, everybody enjoyed my original piece "Wahaha (sound of laugh)."Laughing and keeping time with the hands; Wahaha, Wahaha, Waha, Waha, Wahaha. I believe that peace will come true if everybody will laugh with Wahaha. Laughing is also good to your health! I am very happy to see people who enjoy music. It impresses me and I learn a lot from them as well. I am often told that the piano project is really hard work, but this project gives me a lot of energy. This is volunteer work for a good purpose. I am planning to donate pianos to Vietnam, Chernobyl, South Africa, Eritrea, and Myanmar. However, it costs an average 10,000 dollars per 10 pianos to ship. There are many requests to send the pianos, but there are not enough funds. So the piano donations are limited. However, I will do my best to donate the pianos even it takes time.