"Pauline Oliveros was a senior figure in contemporary American music. Her career spans fifty years of boundary dissolving music making. In the '50s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. Recently awarded the John Cage award for 2012 from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, Oliveros was Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College. Oliveros has been as interested in finding new sounds as in finding new uses for old ones --her primary instrument was the accordion, an unexpected visitor perhaps to musical cutting edge, but one which she approaches in much the same way that a Zen musician might approach the Japanese shakuhachi. Pauline Oliveros' life as a composer, performer and humanitarian was about opening her own and others' sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Since the 1960's she has influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual. Pauline Oliveros was the founder of "Deep Listening," which comes from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation and electro-acoustics. Pauline Oliveros describes Deep Listening as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening was my life practice," she explains, simply. Oliveros was founder of Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation, now the Center For Deep Listening at Rensselaer."

"Miya Masaoka, musician, composer, performance artist, has created works for koto, laser interfaces, laptop and video and written scores for ensembles, chamber orchestras and mixed choirs. In her performance pieces she has investigated the sound and movement of insects, as well as the physiological responses of plants, the human brain, and her own body. Within these varied contexts of sound, music and nature, her performance work emphasizes the interactive, live nature of improvisation, and reflects an individual, contemporary expression of Japanese gagaku aural gesturalism.

Masaoka's work has been presented in Japan, Canada, Europe, Eastern Europe and she has toured to India six times. Venues include V2 in Rotterdam, Cybertheater in Brussels, Elektronisch Festival in Groningen, the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, The Electronik Body Festival in Bratislava, Slovakia, Radio Bremen, Germany, Festival of Lights, Hyberadad, India, and the London Musicians Collective.

Since forming and directing the San Francisco Gagaku Society, Masaoka has been creating new ways of thinking about and performing on the Japanese koto. She has developed a virtuosic and innovative approach, including improvisation and expanding the instrument into a virtual space using computer, lasers, live sampling, and real time processing.

Masaoka has been developing koto interfaces with midi controllers since the 1980's originally with Tom Zimmerman, co-inventor of the Body Glove. Since then, she has she has worked at STEIM, Amsterdam, CNMAT, and with Donald Swearingen to build interfaces with the computer and koto, at times using pedals, light sensors, motion sensors and ultrasound. With the koto connected directly to her laptop, she records her playing live, and processes the samples in real time. This new koto is able to respond dynamically and interactively in a variety of musical environments, and improvise with the processed sounds."

"Great-great-granddaughter of Tokuhiro Taiboku, the founder of the Seikyodo Ichigenkin school. She received instruction from his great-grandmother, Matsuzaki Issui (third head of the Seikyodo Ichigenkin school, a holder of a nationally designated intangible cultural property), from a young age.

In 1988, Matsuzaki Issui passed away. Minegishi inherited the position of fourth head at a young age. Since then, she has studied under Saito Ichiyo as his guardian. She graduated from Sacred Heart University. She graduated at the top of his class from the 40th NHK Japanese Traditional Music Performer Training Program. She studied the Vietnamese ichigenkin, Dan Bau, under Nguyen Thi Hai Phuong in Ho Chi Minh City. In order to pass on the tradition of ichigenkin music, which flourished during the Edo period and was originally an instrument for spiritual training, to the next generation, she cooperates with activities to promote Japanese traditional music appreciation classes for elementary school students. She performs classical and new compositions in concerts and lecture concerts several times a year both domestically and internationally, and is also involved in teaching. Her 20th anniversary concert in November 2008 was attended by Her Majesty the Empress. She is also exploring new avenues of collaboration with arts other than music, such as dance and theater. In 2009, she won the bronze medal in the one-string and two-string instrument category at the Delphic (Cultural Arts Olympics). With a grant from the Asian Cultural Council, she undertook training in New York for eight months in 2010 and in Taipei for three months in 2013."