Music is the most intimate art. It will tingle the spine, send jolts of adrenaline, and elicit tears. It will motivate armies to battle and woo lovers into warm arms. We often define ourselves and choose our companions by the style of chords and melodies we prefer.

Creators of music, composers, are able to cast powerful spells over the souls of others. But that power, if sincere and authentic, comes at a price. Digging around in the subterranean layers of the psyche and manipulating emotions is black magic.

When Kimiko Ishizaka started composing, many many years ago, the high price tag was overwhelming to her. I remember her first major work, a cello sonata — unplayed and unheard by anyone but her to this day. The immediate signs of her labors — exhaustion, vulnerability, introversion — were plain to see. What was unexpected, though, was the unbearably high energy cost of exposing the music to others.

She shared the manuscript with a select few people in positions that would have allowed them to encourage her. When the encouragement didn’t come, it killed the music dead. Rationally, it shouldn’t have mattered. She could have brushed it off and continued mining away in the veins of emotional sediment that lay dormant underneath the self.

But she didn’t compose more. The Sonata went into a drawer, and she instead went on to become one of the most significant interpreters and performers of J.S. Bach, ever. She made three glorious recordings of his music and greatly enhanced the creative commons by releasing them into the public domain.

Along the way, years later, the temptation to compose — to again dig into the soul with pick and shovel —reappeared, in the form of Bach’s last fugue, left uncompleted at his death. She indulged in casting spells and wrote a completion of that piece, which she performed at Carnegie Hall, and which you can hear (and see).

Today, the balance has shifted, somehow, subtly but inexorably. Kimiko is not practicing more Bach pieces right now. Her attention has jumped forward several hundred years, bewitched by the melancholy of a blues chord, and has landed in the ii-V-I of modern jazz.

She has a new album. It is entitled “New Me!”, and it comes from deep places within. Love places. Heartbreak places. Loneliness places. The music is laced with Birdland but built on Bach. It signifies a total rebirth of Kimiko as an artist, as a composer.

This music, so beautiful, so sad yet hopeful, has been burning an underground fire in my soul since the day I first heard it. Now Kimiko is sharing it with the world. She’s opening herself up and placing her very essence on display. May it cast a spell over you, too — you soldier, you lover.