Teacher, performer, composer and filmmaker Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto has played the Japanese koto most of her life. She began learning at an early age under the tutelage of her mother, Kazuko Muramoto and went on to study traditional Japanese koto music with masters Chikushi Katsuko, Kazue Kudo and Yoko Gates. Shirley plays the koto in various styles and genres, expanding the repertoire of traditional music through collaborations, arrangements and compositions. A musician of many accolades, in 2012, the National Park Service’s Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program awarded her funds for the documentary film Hidden Legacy: Japanese Traditional Performing Arts in the World War II Internment Camps (2014), culminating her decades-long research on this little-known part of U.S. history. 

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