RESEARCH
MUSIC 4 EYES+EARS Research Program
Megumi Masaki is a pianist who specializes in new music, interactive multimedia performance and interdisciplinary collaborations. Her MUSIC4EYES+EARS (M4E+E) research program and collaborations explore new models of interaction between sound, image, text and movement in multimedia works that reimagine the piano and pianist through new technologies. These include hand-gesture-motion tracking above the keyboard to generate and control live-electronics and live-video, 3D visuals, AI, keyboard controlled computer game, e-textile sensors and active infra-red tracking. M4E+E works design new strategies for interdisciplinary performance, shift perceptions of performance space, and develop interactive technologies in all stages of the development, creation, preparation, production of live piano + multimedia performance. Central to Megumi’s work is how interactivity and integration of image, movement, text and sound can create new immersive environments and expressive potentials as a whole.
Forty-eight new works have been created for/together with Megumi and she has premiered over 100 works worldwide.
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 Cathy Mattes, Di Brandt, Vito Pasquale, and choreographers Genèvieve 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 multimedia performance.
Devoted to the advancement of Manitoba composer S. C. Eckhardt-Gramatté's music, Megumi has performed and championed her works worldwide. Since the 1980s, as Megumi’s fascination with the integration of image, sound and space emerged, she often pairs these performances with the expressionist paintings of Walter Gramatté in concert, gallery, outdoor and other non-traditional spaces. She has recorded CDs of Eckhardt-Gramatté’s piano works and the complete works for violin and piano duo with violinist Oleg Pokhanovski, and has published a critical performance edition of her Piano Caprices. Megumi also made her film debut as the music historical researcher and piano performer in Appassionata: The Extraordinary Life and Works of Eckhardt-Gramatté by Paula Kelly for CBC's Opening Night and Buffalo Gal Pictures. Appassionata premiered at the Montreal International Festival of Films on Art and screened at the Rome Music DOCFEST section of the Festival di Palazzo Venezia. The film was awarded a Chris Statue at the 2006 Columbus Film & Video Festival.
Another interest since 2001 is developing a training method and examining music performance anxiety from the sport psychological perspective for optimal performance and well-being of musicians. Megumi’s work and research collaborations have been awarded peer-reviewed funding from the Deutsches Olympisches Institut (DOI) Willi-Daume Prize, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council and FACTOR.
Latest
Merging the worlds of interactive piano+computer music and computer gaming:
Piano Games by Keith Hamel
Collaboration with Keith Hamel, composer and computer music specialist, to create a computer game that is controlled by live piano performance. The position and motion of the hands of the performer are tracked to generate all the audio events. MaxMSP does audio analysis of the piano performance so pitch, spectrum, amplitude and onset are tracked during the performance. The visuals are a combination of physical objects that are part of the game and particle systems that are generated by the piano sounds and whose attributes and colour are modified by the pitch content of the piano performance. Each performance will be different, both in terms of the visuals that occur, the piano part, and the sounds that are generated. The high-resolution graphics and the immersive sound environment will create an exciting multimedia environment.
Doshite? by Bob Pritchard
Collaboration with composer Bob Pritchard on the creation of a new piece どうして Doshite? (Japanese for Why?) and new interface “Sleeve Hand Responsive User Garment (SHRUG)” with e-textile sensors and active infra-red tracking to create a new interactive live performance environment. I will also sing/speak text from long-lost letters from interned Japanese-Canadians, and personal accounts from my community. The new interface communicates conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the performer now tangible to the audience through touch triggers, voice, piano and electronically generated sound. Doshite? offers a gateway to discuss different perspectives in Canadian history and honours the 21,000 Japanese-Canadian interned during the Second World War.
Lockdown Composing Project with Pete Stollery
Lockdown Composing Project in collaboration with SOUND Scotland and Pete Stollery, composer specialising in electroacoustic music and Professor at the University of Aberdeen. Five new multimedia chamber works are being created that examines the possibilities and limitations of Zoom software and online technology for geographically isolated musicians to perform together live from different locations in Scotland and Canada. These works by Canadian, Indigenous and Scottish creators will be premiered live online during the joint SOUND Festival and BU Indigenous New Music Festival in January 2021. Connecting community and enhancing the well-being of musicians are interests in my research and teaching.
MUSIC4EYES+EARS: N/ICE (New Interactive Creative Expressions)
M4E+E: N/ICE is developing new works with composers in the Canadian sub-Arctic and across North America for piano, Seaboard Grand synthesizer, interactive electronics, videos and text, that examines environmental impacts of changes to ice on community.
Noiseborder Ensemble
Megumi is a member of the Noiseborder Ensemble (University of Windsor) which creates and performs interactive multimedia works featuring a combination of acoustic and electronic instruments as well as live processing and mixing of sound and video. Performances draw on diverse musical traditions including chamber music, experimental music and improvisation.
Collective with Ken Steen (composer), Stephen Pier (choreographer), Gene Gort (visual artist), Vito Pasquale (writer), Tim Lawless (computer technician)
