Category: Reviews

  • Electronic Musician: “Electric Ladyland”

    by Bean with Gino Robair, Electronic Musician  April 1, 2001 Artists who customize or build instruments to realize their singular artistic visions often make the most exciting music. Three female performers who take that route — Krystyna Bobrowski, Miya Masaoka, and Kaffe Matthews — make groundbreaking music that transcends gender and conventional musical expectations. Composer and… More »

  • SF Weekly: “Border Crossings”

    by Sam Prestianni, SF Weekly July 26, 2000 Using everything from kotos to cockroaches, synthesizers to strippers, Miya Masaoka is redefining the musician’s creative process. To take advantage of her artist-in-residence tenure this past spring at the Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco kotoist Miya Masaoka had to haul her weird wired world to the… More »

  • Metro Active: Challenging the Koto-Monster

    by Marianne Messina, Metro Active July 2000 Tradition meets the cutting edge when Miya Masaoka manipulates her koto. ALTHOUGH MIYA MASAOKA plays the Japanese koto, an instrument wrapped in more than 1,000 years of tradition, there isn’t much that’s traditional about her. Masaoka has taken her “note-bending zither,” her refined technique, her Gagaku (formal court… San Francisco Classical Voice: Electronic Music, A Blast, A Vision

    by Thomas Gross May 5, 2000 Give some people an amp, and they can’t wait to see just how loud it can go. Leather-jacketed juvenile delinquents who preen at heavy metal concerts have no idea of the true limits of auditory toughness. When they walk into a rock concert, the blast from the immense speakers… More »

  • New York Press: “The Queen of the Bees”

    by Sam Prestianni, The New York Press March 4, 1998 She’s jammed with a few thousand bees and let giant cockroaches cross her naked flesh. She’s played with strippers on the street for lunchtime passersby and rocked the conservative Monterey Jazz Festival with bracing noise experiments. A forward-thinking composer-improviser with world-class skills and vision, Bay Area… More »

  • San Francisco Bay Guardian: “Miya Masaoka Trio: Monk’s Japanese Folk Song (Dizim)”

    by Derk Richardson, San Francisco Bay Guardian January 28, 1998 THE NOVELTY of hearing Thelonious Monk’s “Epistrophy” or “‘Round Midnight” performed on a Japanese koto quickly dissolves into wonderment in the early moments of Miya Masaoka’s new CD — and into unconditional acceptance of the 21-string zither as a jazz instrument. Since releasing her 1993 debut… More »