“I search for answers a lot in life when I feel like I don’t know which way to go or what’s right or wrong,” says singer-songwriter Angela Aki. “So I turn to the piano and search for the answers through songs, and I figured in the end that the searching process has all the answers you are truly looking for.” Born in Itano, a town of 14,600 in rural Tokushima Prefecture, Shikoku Island, to a Japanese father (Kiyoshi Aki, cofounder of the AEON English-school chain) and an Italian-American mother, 31-year-old Aki’s turbulent life story — which took her to the United States and back again — has handed her more questions than most.