Megumi Masaki is an innovative pianist, interactive multimedia performing artist, educator and curator. For over thirty years, she has established a reputation as an internationally recognized “mind expanding” (Frettabladid) interpreter of new music with “electric and intimately sensitive musicianship” (BroadwayWorld Ireland). Her work explores new models of interaction and integration of sound, image, text and movement in multimedia works through new technologies, including hand-gesture-motion tracking to generate and control live-electronics and live-video, 3D visuals, piano controlled computer game, AI, e-textile sensors and active infra-red tracking. With this work, Megumi aims to create new immersive environments and expressive potentials for the piano and pianist. As a Japanese-Canadian artist, her work examines hybridity in multiracial identity and Asian music, and strives to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

Megumi is featured at major festivals and venues around the world, including the Barbican’s Sound Unbound Festival, Bangor BBC Music Festival, Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Oxford University Magdalen Arts Week, St Andrews New Music Week, (UK), Shanghai New Music Festival (CN), Dark Music Days Festival Reykjavik (IS), De Doelen (NL), IRCAM (FR), Sonorities Festival Belfast (IE), NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, National Museum of Women in Arts (USA), Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Winnipeg New Music Festival, National Art Gallery Ottawa, Ottawa Chamberfest and ISCM World Music Days Vancouver (CDN).

Megumi’s interdisciplinary collaborators include composers Keith Hamel, T. Patrick Carrabré, Nicole Lizée, Brent Lee, Bob Pritchard, Ken Steen, Douglas Finch, Ambrose Field, Gordon Fitzell, Melody McKiver, visual artists Sigi Torinus, Gene Gort, Chris McNamara, writers Di Brandt, Vito Pasquale, and choreographers Geneviève Grady and Stephen Pier. Projects focus on augmenting the piano and its surrounding space as a visual as well as interactive musical instrument in live performance. Her work and collaborations have been awarded funding by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council and FACTOR.

Forty-eight new works have been created for/together with Megumi and she has premiered over 100 works. Her latest double disc recording of works written for/with her, MUSIC4EYES+EARS CD/Blu-Ray under the Centrediscs label, is hailed as “deliciously ambitious” (Musicworks), “simply breathtaking. That has principally to do with Masaki’s pianism … visionary performance” (WholeNote). It earned her a nomination for Classical Artist of the Year, Western Canadian Music Awards. 

Megumi is a member of the experimental improvisation Noiseborder Ensemble (University of Windsor) that creates and performs multimedia works featuring a combination of acoustic and electronic instruments as well as live processing and mixing of sound and video. She is also a member of the Slingshot-Kidõ (University of Hartford) that creates works involving a theatrical-dance-electroacoustic-visual interdisciplinary approach to piano performance for traditional and non-traditional concert spaces.

Megumi is a Full Professor of Piano at Brandon University’s School of Music and the director of its New Music Ensemble and New Music Festival. In collaboration with Knowledge Keeper Barb Blind and Michif curator and writer Cathy Mattes, Megumi founded the Brandon University Indigenous New Music Festival. She is also on faculty at the Casalmaggiore International Festival Italy, Chetham's International Summer School and Festival Manchester UK and at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She is regularly invited to give lectures and masterclasses at universities worldwide. Her success in teaching was recognized with the 2010 Brandon University Alumni Association's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her teachers include Leonard Isaacs, Peter Katin, Ronald Turini, Jack Behrens and Kendall Taylor.

Megumi is the Artistic Director of the annual Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition, unique in its focus on Canadian and contemporary music, and she curates the Contemporary International Music Exchange (CIME) Italy. 

www.megumimasaki.com