Musicians from a Different Shore

Middle-class Japanese and Korean familes leave their lives behind and bring their talented children to study music in New York City. Asian American families all over the United States register their pre-schoolers in local Suzuki method classes, intiating them into years of classical music training. On concert stages Asian faces are suddenly conspicuous. In the first book to account for the growing prominence of Asians in the world of Western classical music, Mari Yoshihara grapples with the significance of this trend. Yoshihara explores the history of East Asian nations' adoption of Western music to explain why the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese are the most visible Asian groups in the field today. Interviewing established and aspiring musicians, she develops a complex picture of the Asians and Asian Americans who have dedicated themselves to classical music in the United States. As a serious pianist, she understands that for them the power of the music transcends the issues of identity (such as race, gender, and sexuality) that loom large for cultural critics. This is a book about the about the social and cultural origins of this trend but it is also about the lives and work of individual musicians devoted to their art.

Mari Yoshihara is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.She is the author of Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism.