Namekawa was born in Tokyo, Japan, She studied Kunitachi College of Music, under the pianist Mikio Ikezawa, and at the Paris Conservatory under Henriette Puig-Roget. She won the Leonid Kreutzer Prize in 1994 and graduated as a soloist with special distinction in 1995.[2]
In 2003, she began regularly performing piano duos with American conductor and pianist, Dennis Russell Davies.[3][4] The two are married.[5]
In 2013, she performed the world premiere of Philip Glass's 20 Études for solo piano during the Perth International Arts Festival, in Perth, Australia.[6] She later performed the Études' US premiere at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, in San Francisco, California, in March, 2015.[7][8]
In July, 2019, she premiered Glass's Piano Sonata, which was specifically written for her to perform, in Essen, Germany.[9][10] On 13 May, 2022, she led the US premiere of Joe Hisaishi's Toccata at Kresge Auditorium in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[11]
