Miya Masaoka (born 1958)
Miya Masaoka was born in Washington, DC. She grew up playing piano but became exposed to Japanese music and instruments such as the koto through family members.
Besides composing music for western instruments, Miya Masaoka has also explored Japanese traditions, including Noh opera. She’s done installations as well as performative lectures and demonstrations of her interactive work with the biological response of plants.
Her website states that
her work operates at the intersection of spatialized sound, frequency and perception, performance, social and historical references. Whether recording inside physical objects or inside a plant or the human body, within architecturally resonant spaces or outdoor resonant canyons, she creates incongruencies that feed the paradox of the contemporary condition.
One of her interests is the one string koto or ichigenkin, a type of monochord, which she has studied within a tradition founded by her great great grandfather. She describes the ichigenkin as “very illustrative in the frequencies, harmonic nodes and harmonic spectrum, and the mathematical relationships and proportions of music and sound.”
Here is Miya Masaoka performing on a one string koto.