BIO
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Born in Chitose, Japan, composer Sato Matsui is a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at The Juilliard School, where she also earned her MM while studying with Robert Beaser. Ms. Matsui's compositional style draws influence from traditional Japanese sonorities as well as her training as a classical violinist. In 2019, Matsui was named a recipient of the Charles Ives Prize and a Fulbright Scholarship.
Her current projects include a commission from flutist Carol Wincenc for her 50th Anniversary Commissioning Project, which will be premiered at the Annual National Flute Association Convention in Salt Lake City 2019, and performed again at Carnegie Hall in the spring of 2020. Her large ensemble pieceKinokonoko (Mushroom Child), which was commissioned by Joel Sachs for the New Juilliard Ensemble, received its Lincoln Center premiere in spring of 2019.
Ms. Matsui believes in the ability of art to foster a culture of trust and empathy. In 2018, she collaborated with the Uhuru String Quartet on Free and So Thankful,a piece born out of a compositional workshop conducted at a Women in Need (WIN) shelter in Manhattan. Free and So Thankfulhas since been concertized in multiple venues across New York, Massachusetts, and Texas as part of a benefit series for women’s shelters. In the summer of 2019, Ms. Matsui is joining flutist Stephanie Kwak in launching an organization to promote cultural and political confluence amongst East Asian countries through music making.
Ms. Matsui has worked extensively with dancers and choreographers of diverse traditions, and in 2017 was named the Resident Composer for the Creative Movement and Gestures Program at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She has also collaborated independently with choreographer Sean Lammer, hip-hop dancer Ofilio Sinbadinho, and movement artist Rachel Pospisil, to name a few.
In 2017, Ms. Matsui worked with librettist Sarah LaBrie and director Mikhaela Mahony to create and
produce Hoshi, an opera that follows a young woman’s conflicting search for reconciliation with her estranged father. Her scoring of Shakespeare’s play As You Like Itwill be produced by director Ian Belknap in May of 2019 at the McClelland Drama Theater.
For the academic year of 2019-2020, Ms. Matsui will research the manuscripts of Erik Satie in France during her residency at La Schola Cantorum as a Fulbright Scholar. Her work will culminate in a scholarly edition of Satie’s published and unpublished works, which is the topic of her doctoral dissertation.
Ms. Matsui earned her BA from Williams College, where she studied with composition with Ileana Perez-Velazquez, violin with Joana Genova-Rudiakov, and conducting with Ronald Feldman. At Juilliard, she studies composition with Robert Beaser and conducting with Jeffrey Milarsky. Ms. Matsui is the recipient of the Milton & Silvia Babbitt Scholarship, Cartwright Scholarship, Gretchaninoff Memorial Prize, Celia Ascher Doctoral Fellowship, and King Doctoral Scholarship.
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More information can be found on http://www.satomatsui.com.