Megumi Masaki

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 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.

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.

megumimasaki.com