Asian Descent > Japan Archives - Page 8 of 9

Misato Mochizuki

Misato Mochizuki’s works, which have been performed at international festivals such as the Salzburg Festival, the Biennale di Venezia, and the Folle Journée in Tokyo, have received numerous awards. Her most outstanding productions include the orchestral portrait concert at Suntory Hall in Tokyo (2007), the cinema concert at the Louvre with the music to the silent film Le fil blanc de la cascade by Kenji MIzoguchi (2007), and the portrait concert at the Festival d’Automne in Paris (2010).

Karen Tanaka

Karen Tanaka is an exceptionally versatile composer and pianist. She has composed extensively for both instrumental and electronic media.

Toshiko Akiyoshi

Toshiko Akiyoshi changed the face of jazz music over her sixty-year career. As one of few women and Asian musicians in the jazz world, Akiyoshi infused Japanese culture, sounds, and instruments into her music. As a pianist, bandleader, and composer-arranger, Akiyoshi cemented her place as one of the most important jazz musicians of the twentieth century.

Yoko Ono

Ono’s performances and instructional paintings of the early 1960s changed forever the relationship between artist and audience.

Yayoi Kusama

More important than the impact her diverse work has on the art market is its influence on other artists and movements, which spans generations. To this day, she represents herself as a lone wolf most comfortable with being known as independently avant-garde.

Hōjō Masako

Hōjō Masako, known as the “nun shogun”, exercised significant political power in the early years of the Kamakura period (1192 to 1333).

Patsy Takemoto Mink

In 1959 when Hawaii became a U.S. State, Patsy Mink knew she wanted to run for a position in government. Little did she know, she would become the first woman of color elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and the first Asian-American woman to serve in Congress. In addition to writing bills like Title IX, the Early Childhood Education Act, and the Women’s Educational Equity Act, Mink was the first Asian-American to run for U.S. President.

Miné Okubo

War internee and artist, Miné Okubo is well known for her representations of daily life and humanity. She is most famous for her drawings depicting Japanese and Japanese American internment during World War II.

Ailes Gilmour

Dancer Ailes Gilmour was one of the young pioneers of the American Modern Dance movement of the 1930s and one of the first members of Martha Graham’s dance company.
After graduating from high school in 1929, Gilmour studied dance and performing arts on scholarship at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where she met the young Martha Graham and joined Graham’s new professional dance troupe. In 1932, Gilmour performed at the opening of Radio City Music Hall with Graham’s company. Their work, Choric Patterns, lasted on stage for only a week, leading Gilmour to comment to a friend that Radio City Music Hall could succeed only when it became a movie theater with Rockettes.
In the 1930s, Gilmour performed with dancer-choreographer Bill Matons, the director of the “experimental unit” of the New Dance League, which had evolved from the Workers Dance League between 1931 and 1935. In 1937, Ailes and Matons performed at the Brooklyn Museum in a Works Progress Administration (WPA) recital. In 1939, they perormed in a WPA-sponsored Broadway musical, Adelante.

Komako Kimura

Born: July 29 1887, Japan Died: 10 July 1980 Country most active: Japan Also known as: 木村駒子, Komaku Kimura or Komago Kimura (misspellings in American newspapers) Komako Kimura was […]