Miya Masaoka

Miya Masaoka, Associate Professor at Columbia University and Director of the Sound Art MFA Program, is a composer, sound artist and musician who creates works for orchestra, acoustic phenomena, video, electronics and installation. Whether recording inside physical objects, plants or the human body or within architecturally resonant spaces or outdoor resonant canyons, Masaoka creates incongruencies that feed the paradox of the contemporary condition.

She is the recipient of the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright, and commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the Library of Congress, EMPAC and the Studio Residency at Park Avenue Armory. Her works have been presented at the Venice Biennale, MoMA/PS1, Governors Island (NY), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Kunstmuseum Bonn, and Darmstadt. Her compositions have been performed by the BBC Scottish Orchestra, Jack Quartet, MIVOS, Dal Niente, the S.E.M. Ensemble, Volti, Bang On a Can All-Stars, Either/Or Ensemble, Del Sol Quartet, Volti, Ensemble Mosaik, and Joan Jeanrenaud, formerly of Kronos.

As an improviser, Masaoka has performed and recorded with artists such as Pauline Oliveros, Cecil Taylor, Pharoah Sanders, Henry Brandt, Christian Wolfe, Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman, Gerry Hemingway, Zeena Parkins, Myra Melford and a Duo CD with Anthony Braxton on RogueArt Records. Her teachers include Alvin Curran, David Tudor, Maryanne Amacher and Togi Suenobu.

Her writings, such as “The Vagina is the Third Ear”” or “Vaginated Chairs”, have been published by The Theater Review (NYU) and Peripheries (Harvard Divinity School's Center for the Study of World Religions).