Album Notes

Masayuki Koga - joined collaborating for the opening piece of Kitaro’s CD- is now nominated for Grammy-award of 2007.

Masayuki Koga paints the tonal landscape with the elements natural to this bamboo flute and gives us a recording which is familiar yet new each time we listen -- James Barrett.

Masayuki Koga studied Kinko Shakuhachi with his father, Kiichi Koga, and Tozan School with Master Kazan Sakai in Tokyo. In 1967, he became the youngest member of the award-winning Ensemble Nipponia. He worked with that orchestra for four years, participating in many concerts and recordings. Some of his performance and recording received the highest awards from the Ministry of Education of Japan. In 1966 he received his Master's degree in Law from Meiji University in Tokyo.

In 1973 he moved to the United States and spent several years performing throughout North America. In 1981 he founded the Japanese Music Institute of America(JMI). In the intervening years, he has taught and gave lectures in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the Naropa Institute in Colorado, at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, and Stanford University. He has also performed extensively and traveled to Germany for the World Music Festival as a representative of Japanese music in 1988.

In 1998, he collaborated with Taiko music in the "Deai" project, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. At the same year, he formed the Japanese Folk Jazz Ensemble "Essence" with koto: Michiyo Koga and taiko: Kenny Endo and Jimi Nakagawa.

In 2001 he organized the JMI 20th Anniversary Concert at the Hertz Concert Hall, U.C. Berkeley with co-sponsored by the U.C. Berkeley on September 16th . It was the first co-sponsoring with outside organization for the history of U.C. Berkeley.

He is presently the director and the principal shakuhachi instructor for the Japanese Music Institute of America, and the representative for the Essence. Essence has been selected for the 1998-2006 Touring Artists Directory by the California Arts Council as the music ensemble of Japanese instrumental music.

In 2001, he was honored and received an Award from the California Arts Council for his contributions, leadership, and sacrifice for the benefit of youth, the next generation of artists, and all citizens of the state of California.
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MASAYUKI KOGA: On Heart of the Wind he plays the shakuhachi flute, very meditatively, and in the modern tradition - a trifle more rounded in tone than one otherwise often hears.
----Numen Music Center