People

Miya Masaoka is based in New York City and is an American composer, musician, and sound artist.
Her work encompasses contemporary classical composition, improvisation, installation, electroacoustic music and performance art. Her full-length ballet was performed at the Venice Biennale 2004. She is the recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship for Japan, 2016. Since the early 1990’s she has used the computer, spatialization, designed and built midi gestural interfaces and created pieces based on insect movement, plant and human brain response. She has designed and built the wearable computer LED Kimono. She studied both Japanese and Korean court music; gagaku with Togi Suenobu, and directed the San Francisco Gagaku Society for seven years.
Her work has been performed throughout the world including the Miller Theater, NYC, The Korean National Traditional Music Hall (Seoul, South Korea), Merkin Hall, V2 (Rotterdam), Ircam, (Paris), KunstRadio (Vienna), Radio Breman (Germany), Alice Tully Hall, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), The Walker art gallery, Chicago Contemporary Art Museum, Redcat Theater, Los Angeles, and festivals including Moers (Germany), Victoriaville (British Columbia), City of Women (Slovenia), Other Minds Festival and many others.
Her works have been premiered by the La Jolla Symphony, Bang on a Can, So Percussion, Alonzo King, Volti, The San Francisco Choral Society, Ensemble Either/Or, Joan Jeanrenaud (formerly of Kronos Quartet), Piedmont Choirs, ROVA, Del Sol String Quartet, Kathleen Supove, James Ilgenfritz. She has performed and recorded with such figures as Pauline Oliveros, Ornette Coleman, Christian Wolff, Henry Brant, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Robert Dick, Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman, Pharoah Sanders and William Parker, Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser and Larry Ochs.
She has held residencies at Issue Project Room (Silo), Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski, Warsaw, Poland, Headlands Center for the Arts, CA, STEIM, Djerassi, Engine 27/Harvestworks, The Western Front, Wattis and Buena Center for the Arts.
Her awards include the Doris Duke Artist Award, the Alpert Arts Award, Fulbright, Asian Cultural Council, ASCAP, NEA, and others.
She has taught at Bard College, Milton Avery School of the Arts, MFA program in Music/Sound since 2003, and has taught music composition at New York University in the Arts and Sciences, and was an invited Professor in the Sound Art Dept. at Columbia University, 2015.
www.miyamasaoka www.ledkimono.com www.solitaryb.com