Arts Leadership at USC hosts a conversation with Dr. Mari Yoshihara, Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaii and author of Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music. 

MUS Building • Room 102B

Musicians of Asian descent enjoy unprecedented prominence in concert halls, conservatories, and classical music performance competitions. Mari Yoshihara looks into the reasons for this phenomenon, starting with her own experience of learning to play piano in Japan at the age of three. Yoshihara shows how a confluence of culture, politics and commerce after the war made classical music a staple in middle-class households, established Yamaha as the world's largest producer of pianos and gave the Suzuki method of music training an international clientele. Soon, talented musicians from Japan, China and South Korea were flocking to the United States to study and establish careers, and Asian American families were enrolling toddlers in music classes.