Yamanaka studied at the
Berklee College of Music and is an alumna of
Betty Carter's Jazz Ahead residency program at the
Kennedy Center. She has played and recorded with the New York-based DIVA Jazz Orchestra, led by
Sherrie Maricle, but is best known for her small group recordings, which are typically trios and have featured bassists such as
Larry Grenadier and
Robert Hurst, and drummers such as
Jeff Ballard and
Jeff "Tain" Watts. Yamanaka has toured in Europe, the United States and Japan, and has played at several festivals, including the
Umbria Jazz Festival in 2011 (a performance described by the Jazz Times' reviewer as "The biggest surprise of the night [...] Right and left, jaws were dropping", and the Bologna Jazz Festival and
Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival the following year. In 2011 and 2012 Yamanaka played
Gershwin's
Rhapsody in Blue with symphony orchestras in Japan. Yamanaka has released more than 20 recordings as a solo artist, principally on the
Verve label, most of which have been released internationally, Two of her releases,
Forever Begins (2010) and
Reminiscence (2011), were given four-star ratings by AllMusic reviewers, the review of the latter concluding with, "Yamanaka is a fierce talent with robust chops, plenty of soul, and a seemingly endless imagination for the musical possibilities of the piano trio". Yamanaka is one of the 'Frontier Ambassadors' for
Kōriyama City. ==Playing style==