Biography
Miya Masaoka ranks among the small group of players who first carried the koto into avant-garde circles. While based on the West Coast during the early 1990s she drew early attention through work with Pharoah Sanders, Wadada Leo Smith, and Henry Kaiser as well as through her own mixed-media installations and site-specific pieces. By the close of the decade she had shifted primarily to free improvisation, extending the instrument’s range via an electronic interface. Her most visible undertaking at the time was membership in Fred Frith’s trio project Maybe Monday.
An instrument whose lineage reaches back to the eleventh century, the koto remains the one most strongly linked to Japanese tradition. Born in Washington, D.C., to Japanese American parents, Masaoka first encountered the instrument through a cousin living in Japan. Throughout the 1980s she pursued studies in multiple Japanese koto traditions on the U.S. West Coast while earning a B.A. in music from San Francisco State University in 1990 and, four years later, a master’s degree in music composition from Mills College, where she worked with Alvin Curran.
Her training therefore united traditional practice with contemporary classical technique. After 1994 she entered the broader music community through a series of distinctive projects. Bee Project #1, presented in May 1996, incorporated an onstage beehive whose sounds were blended live with the performers’ music. What Is the Difference Between Stripping & Playing the Violin? examined societal views of sex-related work through a rock-classical ensemble, two exotic dancers, and a taped collage of public commentary; staged on a San Francisco street corner in March 1997, the piece received widespread press coverage and was subsequently released on CD by Disques Victo.
Demand soon arose for her distinctive contribution, leading to appearances on recordings and in performance with Steve Coleman, George Lewis, Ben Goldberg, and additional artists while she issued her own discs. The 1996 solo album Compositions/Improvisations and the 1997 trio date Monk’s Japanese Folk Song, recorded with Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille, confirmed her stature as an improviser. She performed solo and in small groups at festivals across Europe and North America, among them the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. Since 1997 she has also performed regularly with Fred Frith and Larry Ochs in the trio Maybe Monday.
An instrument whose lineage reaches back to the eleventh century, the koto remains the one most strongly linked to Japanese tradition. Born in Washington, D.C., to Japanese American parents, Masaoka first encountered the instrument through a cousin living in Japan. Throughout the 1980s she pursued studies in multiple Japanese koto traditions on the U.S. West Coast while earning a B.A. in music from San Francisco State University in 1990 and, four years later, a master’s degree in music composition from Mills College, where she worked with Alvin Curran.
Her training therefore united traditional practice with contemporary classical technique. After 1994 she entered the broader music community through a series of distinctive projects. Bee Project #1, presented in May 1996, incorporated an onstage beehive whose sounds were blended live with the performers’ music. What Is the Difference Between Stripping & Playing the Violin? examined societal views of sex-related work through a rock-classical ensemble, two exotic dancers, and a taped collage of public commentary; staged on a San Francisco street corner in March 1997, the piece received widespread press coverage and was subsequently released on CD by Disques Victo.
Demand soon arose for her distinctive contribution, leading to appearances on recordings and in performance with Steve Coleman, George Lewis, Ben Goldberg, and additional artists while she issued her own discs. The 1996 solo album Compositions/Improvisations and the 1997 trio date Monk’s Japanese Folk Song, recorded with Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille, confirmed her stature as an improviser. She performed solo and in small groups at festivals across Europe and North America, among them the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. Since 1997 she has also performed regularly with Fred Frith and Larry Ochs in the trio Maybe Monday.
Albums
Singles
