Chair of the Visual Arts program, Director of the Sound Art program, and Associate Professor of Professional Practice Miya Masaoka released a double CD, Two Days in Dreamland, last month with Pauline Oliveros and Issui Minegishi on Important Records.
The CD was recorded over the course of two days at Dreamland studios in Hurley, New York, hence the title. With Oliveros, a composer and music theorist who developed the concept of "deep listening" on her Roland V-Accordion, Ichigenkin master Issui Minegishi, and Masaoka on her 21 string Japanese Koto, the recording is an intimate conversation between three expert improvisers and their instruments.
Masaoka's work with the koto—a zither-like string instrument with an ancient history—is informed by her studies of traditional gagaku (Japanese court orchestral music), jazz, new music, improvisation, and electronic music. "Koto" is an abbreviation of "kami no nori koto," or "the oracles of the gods." To pluck its strings is to release their sound, its spirit. As a contemporary and trans-cultural composer (of Japanese heritage and born in America), Masaoka traverses and breaks with cultural tradition through collective improvisations.
Preserving the original chronology of the sessions and thus their emotional motion, each CD represents one day in "Dreamland," in which the three legendary artists create a complex sonic landscape that is as stunning as it is thought-provoking. The CD is available for purchase from Important Records or in digital form on bandcamp.
Miya Masaoka is an American sonic artist, composer and performer. Her work explores bodily perception of vibration, movement, and time, while foregrounding complex timbre relationships. Her body of work encompasses scores for orchestras and ensembles, sculpture works instigating new modes of listening, interactive media and critical writing, and has been presented at the Venice Biennale, MoMA PS1, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany, ICA Philadelphia and a two-floor solo exhibit at Savvy Contemporary, Berlin. As an improvisor, she has performed and/or recorded with Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros and many others. Among her awards are the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Luciano Berio Rome Prize in Music Composition, United States Artists USA Fellowship, the Doris Duke Artist Award, and the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and the Fulbright Scholarship.
