Discipline: Music Composition

Byron Yasui

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Honolulu, HI
MacDowell Fellowships: 1979
Byron Yasui’s degrees include a B.Ed. from the University of Hawai‘i in 1965, an M.M. from Northwestern University in 1967, and a D.M.A. from Northwestern in 1972. He remains active as a freelance jazz double bassist, double bassist with the Honolulu Symphony, and a classical guitar duo partner with Brazilian virtuoso Carlos Barboso-Lima. Since 1985, he has annually received ASCAP standard awards in composition and has had two orchestral works premiered at Carnegie Hall. His works have been performed at Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI) national and regional conferences, three Ernest Bloch Composers Symposiums in Newport, Oregon, the 1994 International Trumpet Guild national conference, the Crane Festival of New Music in Potsdam, New York, the Focus! Music of the Pacific Rim festival at Lincoln Center, and the Bakersfield Symphony’s New Directions Concert. He served as region VII co-chair of the Society of Composers, Inc. and is currently serving a second five-year term on the Honolulu Mayor’s Commission of Culture and the Arts. In June, 1996, an interview that centered on him and his music was presented on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. He was named one of the 500 most influential Asian Americans in the US (in the field of education) in the 1996 edition of Avenue Asia.

Studios

Watson

Byron Yasui worked in the Watson studio.

Built in 1916 in memory of Regina Watson of Chicago, a musician and teacher, this studio was donated by a group of her friends, along with funds for its maintenance. Originally designed to serve as a composers’ studio with room for performance, Watson was used as a recital hall for chamber music for a…

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