About Me
Miyama McQueen-Tokita has studied koto since the age of seven with the
Sawai International Koto School in Melbourne and in Osaka and Tokyo. She has been taught by Kazue Sawai and Satsuki Odamura. She has acquired both contemporary and classical repertoire for koto and voice, and also plays bass koto and shamisen. she is also a licensed teacher of the Sawai koto School School (Sawai Soukyokuin).In 2002, Miyama was the first person to do VCE Solo Music Performance with koto, and was selected to perform in Top Acts in the Victorian Arts Centre in June 2003. In 2005 she completed a semester abroad in Lyon, France, and performed koto there for various audiences. She has since completed her Bachelor of Music/Arts at Monash University with koto as her chief practical study.
Miyama performs regularly in Melbourne, and can be seen in many different contexts...
The koto and its music
The koto (Japanese zither) is one of Japan’s most popular traditional musical instruments. It has maintained a significant place in modern Japan, amidst the thoroughgoing modernization and westernization of the musical culture. Under the impact of western music, performers from within the tradition worked on developing effective notation systems, new compositional techniques, and modifications of the instrument.
The blind kotoist Michio Miyagi (1894-1956) pioneered by creating a new body of composition which incorporated many aspects of western music into the traditional koto repertoire. Although many composers of this his time attempted similar efforts, but many would say that Miyagi was the first composers whose efforts were significantly successful. He also invented a modified version of the koto - the 17-stringed bass koto.
In the postwar period, koto music continued to effectively straddle
the western and the traditional. Tadao and Kazue Sawai were among
the major proponents of new koto music, and established the Sawai International Koto School in 1980. The Sawais sent Satsuki Odamura to set up a branch in Sydney in 1988 and has since established herself as a koto player and world music performer Australia-wide. Tadao Sawai was a prolific composer for koto, as well as an exetremely accomplished perforemer in koto. His compositions are technically very demanding and have stretchd the possibilities that can be explored on the koto as an instrument of expression, and not only tradition. His wife Kazue is a virtuoso performer, who has commissioned works for koto from many major composers, including Sofia Gubaidulina, Yuji Takahashi and many others. Similarly, Satsuki Odamura has had pieces composed for her by Australian composers, such as Peter Sculthorpe, Bary Conyngham, Sarah de Jong, Liza Lim and others.
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