Masayo Ishigure, Chris Vancil + Tomoko Kerr

Spiral Music presents acoustic music every Wednesday evening at the base of the Museum’s spiral staircase. This week Tsekyi D. Tsultrim and Tenzin Choeni are invited to forge a connection between their music and the art in the galleries.

About the Musicians

Masayo Ishigure began playing the koto and jiuta shamisen at the age of five in Gifu, Japan, and has built a multifaceted career that continues to stretch the limits of the koto while maintaining a strong grasp on tradition. In 2005, she was a recording artist on the Grammy-winning soundtrack composed by John Williams for the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, alongside Yitzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma. Her solo album, Grace, was released in 2001. Ishigure has performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall-Weill Recital Hall, BAM, Merkin Hall, Asia Society, Japan Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Symphony Space, and she has been invited to perform at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and the Smithsonian Institute.

Chris Vancil began playing koto in 1991 as a graduate student in Hawaii under Shoko Hikage. He has been a student of Masayo Ishigure since 1997, and has performed with the Sawai Koto Academy of New York at the Japan Society, the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., and several festivals in the New York area. Mr. Vancil received an MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a focus on classical Okinawan music, and an MA in Music Composition from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Tomoko Kerr was born and grew up in Japan. She has been practicing shamisen under Masayo Ishigure since 2007 and has performed at many cultural events in New York tri-state area. She also performed at the International Koto Festival at Sydney Conservatorium of Music in Australia in 2013.