Music Department | UC Santa Cruz

Kumi Uyeda – Currently in the Cultural Musicology program with research interests in Japan‘s indigenous Ainu music, contemporary Japanese music, and social justice issues in music.  Her research involves identity expressed through music in a cross-disciplinary context of power relations between cultural groups informed by social and political influences.  Kumi is a recipient of the Cota-Robles Doctoral Fellowship and the Pacific Rim Research Fellowship.  She received a M.A. from UCSC in Performance Practice and a M.M. from the Manhattan School of Music in Piano.  She has performed with Hesterian Musicism, an improvisatory group that explores inter-disciplinary collaboration, and with Breath of Asia, a group consisting of Vietnamese traditional instruments in a contemporary setting. Kumi is currently conducting fieldwork in Japan.