Noted by The New York Times as a "virtuosic, deeply expressive shakuhachi player and composer" and the LA Times as one of the "better kept secrets of Southern California music," Kojiro Umezaki (梅崎康二郎) continues to seek new musical homes for the shakuhachi, an end-blown bamboo flute with centuries of history in Japan.

His regular performances with the Silkroad Ensemble started in 2001, and he appears as performer/co-composer/Associate Producer on Silkroad's Grammy Award winning album Sing Me Home (2016). Other recordings and appearances with Silkroad include A Playlist Without Borders (2013), the Grammy-nominated album Off the Map (2009), and the Grammy-nominated 2015 documentary film, The Music of Strangers, directed by Morgan Neville.

As a soloist and (co-)leader, In a Circle Records released a distance intertwined... with Hub New Music (2024), 流芳 Flow with pipa virtuoso Wu Man (2021), and (Cycles) with Joseph Gramley, Dong-Won Kim, Faraz Minooei, and Brooklyn Rider (2014). With orchestras he has performed as a soloist with the Houston Symphony and Singapore Symphony, among others.

Other notable recordings as performer, composer, and/or producer include 2023 Grammy-nominee Brooklyn Rider's Dominant Curve (2010), DownBeat Magazine Critics Poll's perennial “Top Flutist of the Year” Nicole Mitchell's Mandorla Awakening II (2017), Miles Davis’s keyboardist Kei Akagi's Aqua Puzzle (2018), and the internationally renowned/world music trailblazers Huun Huur Tu's Ancestors Call (2010). His appearances and recording/composer credits in a number of films, TV, and games include Ghost of Tsushima from Sony Interactive Entertainment (2020); Paper Lanterns (2016) directed by Barry Frechette and Max Exposito on the story of atomic bomb survivor Shigeaki Mori (1937-2026) and American POWs who perished in the bombing of Hiroshima; Words Can’t Go There directed by David Neptune (2019) on the life of the great shakuhachi innovator John Kaizan Neptune; Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain by Morgan Neville (2021); and The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (2017).

Born to a Japanese father and Danish mother, Umezaki grew up in Tokyo. Currently Professor of Music at the University of California, Irvine, he is a core faculty member of the Integrated Composition Improvisation and Technology (ICIT) doctoral program where his practice-based research explores intercultural and hybrid practices in music.