Educator
Bassoonist • Educator • Activist • Scholar
Midori Samson is the newly appointed Artist in Residence at the Greenwood School of Music of Oklahoma State University. Prior to her appointment, she was the Lecturer of Bassoon at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Her applied teaching emphasizes that students focus on bassoon fundamentals, one’s own self-identified goals, and music as social impact, and she works hard to nurture a spirit of community and collaborative learning within her bassoon studio. She previously maintained private studios for middle and high school bassoonists in New York City, Austin, and Chicago. Now, she offers a “pay what you can” rate for private lessons for anyone who is interested. In addition to guest clinician and lecturer appearances at universities across the USA, recent faculty appointments include Bassoons Without Borders, The People’s Music School, and Bocal Majority, as well as invitations from Yo-Yo Ma and Gabriela Lena Frank to teach at Youth Music Culture Guangdong (China) and Tidriks Distance Learning, respectively. She is equally excited about making music with young children; she was also a Morse Teaching Artist Fellow at Juilliard, where she taught 2nd grade music in New York City. With a commitment to training other teachers how to be culturally responsive and trauma-informed in music pedagogy, she recently created Project Tumugtog, a teaching artist residency for UW-Madison music students in the Philippines. This summer, she is leading the first summer arts camp with LunART Inc., in collaboration with Goodman Community Center in Madison.
