Mayumi Miyata

Mayumi Miyata is a Japanese player of the shō, a traditional Japanese mouth organ. Miyata was born on April 1, 1954, in Tokyo and graduated from the Kunitachi College of Music, where she majored in piano. While in school, she began studying gagaku music from Ono Tadamaro of the Imperial Household Agency. From 1979 she performed in gagaku concerts at the National Theatre of Japan, and from 1983 she began giving solo shō recitals, which brought her wider public attention. Although the shō is generally associated with Japan's ancient gagaku court music, Miyata was among the first players of the instrument to specialize in contemporary classical music. She plays a specially constructed instrument with extra pipes, allowing for the use of more chromaticism. The US composer John Cage composed a number of works for Miyata just before his death. Cage met her during the 1990 Darmstadt summer course. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayumi_...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)