‘Dream’ Traveler : When Not Touring, Keiko Matsui Divides Time Between Tokyo and Huntington Beach

Billboard magazine’s current chart of top-selling contemporary jazz albums includes only three female artists, two of whom are singers. Only one of those is in the Top 10. That women is keyboardist, composer and part-time Huntington Beach resident Keiko Matsui.

The chart ranking for her eighth release, “Dream Walk,” which is holding down the No. 7 spot, is nothing new to Matsui. Her previous album, “Sapphire,” was among Billboard’s five top contemporary jazz albums of 1995, and four other Matsui albums have climbed into the Top 20.

“Sapphire” was also nominated as jazz album of the year in the Soul Train Music Awards, which put her alongside such commercial powerhouses as Pat Metheny, Boney James and Fourplay.

Matsui doesn’t see anything remarkable in the fact that she’s one of the few successful female artists in contemporary jazz.

“I never thought about it, really,” she said by phone from Washington during a break in a national tour that brings her to the Galaxy Concert Theatre in Santa Ana tonight. “I’ve never faced any resistance because I’m a woman--not here, not in Japan. All I know is what people tell me: I’m doing very well.”

With a husband, Kazu Matsui, who is a central part of her touring band, and two children, Matsui does face the trials of the working mother, a problem she’s solved in a traditional way.

“I have two daughters, [age] 8 and 1,” she said. “Because we travel a lot, they stay at our home in Japan, in our house, with my mother. Kazu’s parents are also there, so we have double grandparents taking care of them. If we didn’t have this, I could not continue doing what I do. It’s tough to be apart. We exchange faxes, telephone calls and postcards every day.”

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The children are also a source of ideas for the composer-keyboardist. “I had inspiration from the children while I was thinking this [album] up, thinking about their futures and, always, their smiles. When I compose, I work at midnight, when I can concentrate, without babies crying.”

Matsui is known as a composer of lush, impressionistic synthesizer pieces that sometimes utilize the rhythms and moods of her native Japan. Onstage, however, she likes to strap on a guitar-like, shoulder-slung keyboard and wail on the blues, a practice that seems to belie her gentle manner and delicate size.

“Dream Walk,” an enhanced CD that includes a music video, a gallery of photos and a diary of notes from her travels, features backbeat numbers, hip-hop rhythms and ethereal ballads.

“I wanted to make some kind of more serious jazz [and] use world-beat music. I have a musical and spiritual place of my own, and so I think [in terms] of invitations, to invite other people into my music,” she said. “When I start recording, I usually try to write 100 motifs or themes. I don’t listen to other music. I just research in my mind.”

Matsui’s career began when she and Kazu used their honeymoon money to record her first album “A Drop of Water” in 1987. Since then, they have split their time between homes in Tokyo and Southern California, currently Huntington Beach.

“We go back and forth a lot. We live on Huntington Harbour; we have a sailboat and go out when we have the time. We love the ocean,” she said. “It’s a little safer and quieter here than in other places.”

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Matsui also is enjoying greater visibility in her native Japan, where the Gap has just launched a series of ads featuring photos of her by Herb Ritts. The ads will appear in the United States later this year. She also has recorded a series of music videos in the U.S. for airing in Japan.

But the Tokyo-born Matsui now thinks of Orange County as her second home. “Where we live in Tokyo is a quiet, residential neighborhood, not busy like the business area. But we like it very much [in Huntington Beach]. It’s a different scene, a different nature, a beautiful place to live.”

* Keiko Matsui and Lady Mayhem play tonight at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. $17.50-$19.50. (714) 957-0600.