Season 3 - Episode 4: Yuko Asada

Yuko Asada is a Japanese American musician who specializes in the steelpan. She builds and tunes steelpans, composes and arranges music, teaches, and performs on multiple steelpan voices as well as the piano.

In this episode Yuko describes her duties at Northern Illinois University, and how they have changed since the pandemic. She also speaks about how the pandemic has affected her artistic and personal life, and has advice for younger artists, especially those who study cultures other than their own.

Some of Yuko’s most recent performance and educational projects include:

Pan In Unity, a virtual steelband of 691 performers from 23 countries, produced in 2020 by Yuko Asada, Dr. Mia Gormandy Benjamin and Tracy Thornton.

Virtual Steelband (2015) and Virtual Steelband II (2017) were the first large online mass-steelband projects, founded and produced by Yuko Asada, Abram Breiling, Dr. Mia Gormandy Benjamin, and Scott McConnell.

Yuko’s composition for traditional Thai instruments and steelband, "Forn Dueng Khrok Dueng Sak," was premiered in 2016.

Art Lives Theme and Incidental music composed by Nicholaus Meyers, and performed by Nicholaus and Ken Jimenez. Art Lives Logo created by Eduardo Moreno. Art Lives is available here, on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.

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