Yagi Michiyo

Koto performer Yagi Michiyo has appeared with numerous traditional and experimental ensembles from the late 1980s onward. Her koto studies began at age six under Satomi Kurauchi, followed by enrollment at the Sawai Koto School in 1985, where she pursued classical and contemporary koto techniques along with shamisen and jiuta-style singing. A Japan Foundation Grant supported her 1987 tour through England, Italy, Germany, and Southeast Asia. In 1988 she joined the Tadao Sawai Koto Ensemble for its recording of the album Koto. The next year she served as visiting professor of koto and Japanese traditional music at Wesleyan University. Throughout the 1990s she joined additional groups, among them the Kazue Sawai Koto Ensemble, the Min-on Ensemble, and the shakuhachi-led trio Cocoo—later renamed Kokoo—which toured North America, the former USSR, and India. In 1993 she established her debut project Mika, a duo alongside flutist Rie Shimizu, and also launched the koto quartet Koto Vortex while becoming a founding member of the experimental trio Hoahio with Sachiko M and Haco. Through these ensembles she has appeared at prominent creative-music events worldwide, including Canada’s FIMAV, the Vienna Festival, Sapporo’s NOW Music Festival, Tokyo’s Music Merge Festival, and multiple editions of New York’s Bang on a Can festival. Her debut solo album, Shizuku, came out on the New York label Tzadik in 1999.