Midori Samson

Dr. Midori Samson (she/her) サムソンみどりis a bassoonist, educator, and social work researcher. In addition to her appointment at KU, she is a member of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and spends summers teaching at the Bay View Music Festival. Her proudest recent activities include working with community members on the Turkey/Syria border to lead circus performances for refugee families; co-writing a play with artists in Kigali to commemorate the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide; commissioning twenty solo bassoon works by composers from across Africa; composing an autoethnographic piece for bassoon and electronics about the WWII incarceration of her Japanese American family; and leading virtual arts therapy sessions for internally displaced high schoolers in Ukraine. She holds degrees in bassoon performance from The Juilliard School and University of Texas at Austin, and she studied bassoon and social welfare at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.