Midori Samson サムソンみどり

Midori Samson is GlogauAIR resident
from January, 2025 to March, 2025

Midori is a bassoonist, professor, sound artist, and social worker exploring music, trauma, and healing. Her work examines Asian American identity through her ancestors’ collective traumas, using bassoon, field recordings, and visual elements like embroidery, poetry, and photography. Through sound, Samson processes intergenerational trauma and help others use music for resilience and reclamation.

Meet the Artist

Statement

I am a bassoonist, professor, sound artist, and social worker creating at the intersections of music, trauma, and healing. My practice explores my Asian American identity by examining the collective traumas experienced by my Japanese and Filipino ancestors. Using pilgrimage, autoethnography, and speculative fiction as methodologies, I compose with acoustic bassoon and field recordings collected at sites of family trauma (e.g., Hiroshima, Camp Tule Lake). I also integrate visual elements including sashiko (刺し子) embroidery, multi-lingual poetry, film photography, and butsudan (仏壇) installation. With audio distortion, repetition, and classical structures in my music, I process intergenerational trauma with sound, and I support others in using music as a tool for understanding resilience, reclamation, and liberation.

Midori Samson

YouTube

GlogauAIR Project

I will use my GlogauAIR residency to work on music for my upcoming album. Using autoethnographic data and field recordings collected during a recent residency in Japan, I will synthesize those materials into two tracks. One track will represent my pilgrimage to Okayama, the prefecture my family emigrated from in 1906 when they came to the United States. The other track will focus on Hiroshima, reflecting on what my ancestors might have felt upon learning about the atomic bomb’s devastation in their home country from across the Pacific. Additionally, I will develop visual elements to accompany these tracks by conceptualizing ancestral altars that incorporate symbolic imagery. These Butsudan (仏壇) will serve as a tribute to the trauma and resilience inherent in my ancestors’ experiences of war, separation, assimilation, and loss.

CV Summary

Education