Biography
Born and raised in the Tohoku area in Japan and having lived in Tokyo as well, Kozue is now based in the Los Angeles area. She has played the koto since she was three years old under Ikuta-ryu Miyagi-kai and holds a semi-master title. She has also played the shamisen and the shinobue since she was small.
In North America, she has been collaborating with various musicians and movement, visual, installation, and other artists. Not only does she play traditional, contemporary, and experimental music, but she also improvises, composes, and creates mixed media arts. She has performed at various projects and performances including MicroFest (Los Angeles CA), Lucas Artists Residency at Montalvo Arts Center (Saratoga, CA), Center for World Music (San Diego, CA), Desert X (Coachella Valley, CA), SASSAS (Los Angeles, CA), Improvisation Summit of Portland (Portland, OR), Time-Based Art Festival (Portland, OR), Washington Street Art Center (Boston, MA), The Fuse Factory Electronic and Digital Arts Lab (Columbus, OH), Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (Vancouver, Canada), and Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble (Vancouver, Canada).
She founded CalArts Japanese Ensemble while studying there, and she now teaches Japanese music at California Institute of the Arts. She has also been invited as a guest lecturer by schools including, California Institute of the Arts, University of California, Santa Cruz, and MiraCosta College. She travels throughout the USA for lectures, master classes and workshops.
Together with her creative works and inter-disciplinary collaborations with various artists, she has a strong interest in exploring the possibilities of Japanese traditional sounds and performing arts beyond their conventional contexts. She is currently working on integrating koto sounds and computer technology to create new koto experiences.