Miya Masaoka
Miya Masaoka works simultaneously in the varied musical worlds of jazz, Western classical music, electronic music, traditional Japanese music and free improvisation, and is currently the director of an
ensemble of traditional Japanese court music, the San Francisco Gagaku Society. She has studied Japanese music with court musician Suenobu Togi, and holds music degrees from San Francisco State
University, a Masters Degree in Composition from Mills College and certificates from the Chikushi gakko school. She has performed extensively in Japan and the US and also has toured in India and Canada; both solo and with a wide variety of musicians and traditions, including Pharoah Sanders, L. Subramaniam, The Berlin Rias Dorchester Symphony and the Berlin Opera, Rova Saxophone Quartet, Steve Coleman, Mark Izu, Francis Wong, George Lewis, Henry Kaiser, Fred Frith, Wadada Leo Smith, Rohan de Saram (Arditti String Quartet), James Newton and many others.

Her Eastern sense of time and space, multiplicities of aesthetics and improvisational skills have distinguished Masaoka as a new virtuoso and innovator on the contemporary landscape.
She has a residency at STEIM in the Netherlands to build a midi interface for her koto.

http://www.miyamasaoka.com