On Wednesday, October 1, 2025, 6-8:30pm “The Annex Sessions” will continue our music series held at El Cerrito Natural Grocery Company Prepared Food Annex (The Annex) with
Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto & Brian Mitsuhiro Wong
Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto – Koto, Japanese Zither
Brian Mitsuhiro Wong – Koto and Shakahachi, Japanese Zither and Bamboo Flute
Come discover traditional instruments of Japan! Shirley and her son, Brian, will play koto and shakuhachi, Japanese zither and bamboo flute. They play a range of traditional Japanese pieces to jazz on these instruments.
Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto – Koto musician, teacher, band leader, filmmaker, event producer
Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto, is a teacher and performer on the Japanese koto. Shirley received her Shihan with honors and DaiShihan master koto credentials from the Chikushi Kai in Fukuoka, Japan. She has expanded the repertoire of traditional koto music through her jazz fusion group, the Murasaki Ensemble, collaborating, arranging and composing music for the koto in various styles and genres. Shirley has collaborated with many artists and performed with amazing musicians, and performed for celebrity notables starting from childhood with her mother, and later in her own presentations for over 60 years. Shirley researched Japanese traditional performance arts in the World War II concentration camps, inspired by her mother’s experience learning to play the koto from koto teachers at Topaz and Tule Lake camps. In 2012, her project was awarded a National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites grant to turn her decades-long research into a documentary film. Hidden Legacy: Japanese Traditional Performance Arts in the World War II Internment Camps premiered in 2014 and aired on public TV and PBS stations in the U.S. and universities here and in Japan. She was awarded the Bunka Hall of Fame (Japanese cultural arts) in 2012, and in 2021 curated a program of Japanese koto music with the SF Symphony for their virtual CURRENTS series. Shirley is a recipient of the Taproot Fellowship 2024, supported by the Mellon Foundation and Alliance for California Traditional Arts. For the past three years and ongoing she leads the module “WWII Japanese American incarceration” with the Golden State of Song teaching 4th graders about this history through music of that time, administered by the Freight and Salvage education program.
Brian Mitsuhiro Wong, an American of Japanese and Chinese heritage, carries on the musical family koto tradition that he inherited from his mother and grandmother. Brian’s grandmother learned the koto as a little girl in the WWII American concentration camps at Topaz, Utah and Tule Lake, California. Brian’s mother, Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto, started teaching him the koto when he was four years old.
In the tenth grade, Brian experienced the most important musical influence of his young life: a concert performed by Kazue Sawai in San Francisco. When the performance started, Madame Sawai turned out to be everything but conventional.
He was fortunate to meet Madame Kazue Sensei after the concert and she invited Brian to come to Japan to study the koto with her at the Sawai Conservatory in Tokyo. Brian became an ‘uchi-deshi’, a live-in student. Brian has also studied jiuta shamisen while he was studying there. He achieved the Koshi “instructor’s” certification in 2005 and was awarded Grand Prix distinction.
From 5th grade through college, Brian also studied the saxophone under Steve Parker and Dan Zinn. Brian played jazz in the Oaktown Jazz Workshop with mentors Khalil Shaheed and Ravi Abcarian. In college, he traveled to Europe with the Cal State University East Bay (CSUEB) at Hayward Jazz Ensemble directed by Professor Dave Eshelman. He performed Toshiko Akiyoshi’s composition, “Kogun”, on the koto as a soloist with the jazz ensemble at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy and the Montreaux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.
During this time, Brian also started learning the shakuhachi (bamboo flute) from Robin Hartshorne, and continued training with Shigeo Tachibana, Kanow Matsueda and Kaoru Kakizakai. In 2007, Brian attained his B.A. in music composition from Cal State University East Bay. After college, he decided to focus on Japanese music. He has been performing in festivals, events and concerts around the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, and helps his mother with performances and workshops. Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto Brian produced a CD album together, “Oyako Don Koto” (“Parent and Child Koto Music”). He has enjoyed recent collaborations with Nakamura Gankyo which had Brian performing in nagauta style music on shamisen, vocal and koto. Brian was a finalist in the prestigious Kenjun Koto Competition in Kurume, Japan in 2019. He provided koto, shamisen and shakuhachi music for the video game “Call of Duty II: Modern Warfare”, for the Michelin-starred restaurant Omakase Restaurant Sushi Battle with Chef Jackson Yu, and the San Jose anime convention Crunchy Roll.
The Natural Grocery Company is proud to present this series in partnership with SunJams and Javier Navarrette Music Productions.
SunJams is committed to funding children’s music education in underserved public elementary schools. Your donation will help support this ongoing program.
All of the proceeds will go directly to our network of local musicians, each of whom have been severely impacted by the lack of events during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whether you donate $10, $100, or $1000 – any amount helps and will allow us to keep bringing music to our community! As always, your donation to SunJams 501(c)3 may qualify as tax exempt.
Javier Navarrette Music Productions continues to bring live music to several venues around the Bay Area. Javier has been a professional musician and music educator in the Oakland Unified School District for the past 20 years. Over the past few years Navarrette has produced outdoors events that have proven instrumental in enabling musicians to deal with some of the fallout of the pandemic and shutdown that followed.
COVID RELATED SAFETY MEASURES
Please be safe. Feel free to wear a mask if you prefer.
TICKETS
Tickets are NOT required for this venue, you can simply come in, order food and beverages at the Annex counter and pay at the registers.