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Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto
Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto
Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto is known as a musician of traditional Japanese music and has studied classical Japanese koto music extensively with several masters, including Chikushi Katsuko, Kazue Kudo, Yoko Gates and her mother, Kazuko Muramoto. She also plays jazz koto and is the director of the Murasaki Ensemble which features music from traditional to contemporary to jazz and rock, established in 1998. Shirley has performed with famed musicians Chikushi Katsuko, Sawai Kazue, Souju Nosaka Keiko, June Kuramoto, Kazue Kudo, Pete Escovedo, Maurice Jarre, and appeared on recordings with David Grisman, Lori Lewis, Elias Negash and Joe Craven, among others.
Shirley earned her “Shihan” degree (instructor’s credentials) with “Yushusho” (highest) honors and her masters’ “Dai Shihan” from the Chikushi Kai School based in Fukuoka, Japan. Shirley teaches koto privately and through virtual formats using the base curriculum of Chikushi Kai repertoire and traditional koto music. Shirley’s musical training includes playing the violin through her public school days in Oakland, and classical guitar at the college level. With this diverse musical background of Japanese and western music, Shirley has composed and written many arrangements for koto to suit the needs of the diverse artists she has collaborated with through the years.
Because Shirley started performing as a little girl following her mother who was also a koto teacher, she has played koto for over 60 years all over the Bay Area, across the U.S. and in Japan. During the pandemic, she produced streamed programs such as the cultural series “NextGen Geijutsuka: Future Stars of Japanese Cultural Arts”, and “A Tribute to Sahomi Tachibana: American Legacy of a Japanese Dancer”. Recently, she curated Japanese koto programs for the Consulate General of Japan, Nikkei Matsuri Festival and the Old First Concerts concert “Music of Kimio Eto”. In 2021, Shirley was asked to curate a virtual program with the San Francisco Symphony, “CURRENTS” series, which was conceived by the late Oakland Symphony conductor Michael Morgan. In February 2022, she performed at SFJAZZ with jazz harpist Destiny Muhammad.
Shirley’s mom’s story of learning to play the koto at Topaz and Tule Lake camps during WWII led her to research Japanese traditional cultural arts in the WWII camps. This decades long project was awarded funding in 2012 from the National Park Service’s Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant to turn the research into a documentary film. The film “Hidden Legacy: Japanese Traditional Performing Arts in the WWII Internment Camps” was released in 2014 and is one of the few sources of information about how cultural arts thrived in the camps. It is now available for free viewing on YouTube. Shirley and her colleague, Prof. Minako Waseda of Kunitachi University, are currently transcribing all the interviews from the film to live on a new website dedicated to the study of Japanese traditional arts as they were practiced in the WWII camps, which will be available to the public in the next year or two. Because of her koto music originating from the camps, Shirley feels a direct connection to cultural arts in camp and strives to honor the teachers who taught her mother to keep the koto music tradition alive today. She would not have this music in her life if not for the teachers who taught her mother during this challenging time. For this reason, it has become a very special part of her life.
Shirley is also involved with a program educating Berkeley public elementary school students about the music of the WWII American concentration camps, the Golden State of Song Program, administered by Pc Muñoz, the Director of Education and Community Engagement at Freight & Salvage. https://www.goldenstateofsong.com/
LEADERSHIP AND EDUCATOR EXPERIENCE
1976-present Teaching hundreds of private students and classes in public schools and colleges, including UC Berkeley, Willard Middle School and MLK Elementary School in Berkeley, Montclair and Glenview Elementary Schools in Oakland.
2021-present Teaching koto workshops at the Morikami Museum and Gardens, Delray Beach, Florida.
2021-present Demonstrating music and historical talks about WWII Japanese American incarceration to schools in Berkeley and Contra Costa counties as part of the Golden State of Song, administered by the Freight and Salvage music venue.
1998-2019 Director, Murasaki Ensemble Jazz Group
AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS
2024
Taproot Fellowship (look up the wording)
2023
Japanese American Women Outstanding Alumnae of UC Berkeley.
2018, 2024
Finalist in Kenjun Koto Competition, Kurume, Japan
2012
Bunka (Japanaese Cultural Arts) Hall of Fame from Hokka Nichibei Kai (Japanese American Cultural Association of America20122012
GRANT AWARDS
Alliance for Traditional Arts for several apprentices to train future artists for the continuance of Japanese koto music into the future, and for the Living Cultures Programs.
National Park Service/Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant
City of Oakland
SF Japantown Foundation
Berkeley JACL
2011
Master-Apprenticeship Program from ACTA, also awarded for _____ and _____ and ______