Kotringo (コトリンゴ) is the solo project of Rieko Miyoshi (三吉里絵子, born on July 17, 1978), a Japanese-born singer-songwriter currently based in New York. She began playing piano at the age of 5 and wrote her first compositions at the age of 7. Her stage name is a portmanteau of the Japanese words for "little bird" (kotori) and "apple" (ringo), named after her childhood pet bird and the fact that she ate apples every day as a child. In 1999 she obtained a special scholarship to study abroad at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and majored in jazz composition, arrangement, and piano performance. She graduated in 2003 and played live shows in the New York area for a couple of years. Miyoshi began writing songs under the name Kotringo in 2005. In March 2006 she sent a demo tape to Ryuichi Sakamoto's radio program "RADIO SAKAMOTO" and her work caught his attention. She debuted in November 2006 with the single "Konnichi ha, mata ashita" which was used in a TV commercial. Her first album, Songs in the Birdcage, was released in June 2007. Her latest album, Birdcore! was released in April 2014. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.