Midori Samson

Midori Samson is a bassoonist, educator, and social worker

Dr. Midori Samson (she/her/siya) サムソンみどり is a bassoonist, educator, and social worker whose artistic practice integrates music with social justice and healing-centered care. In addition to her position in the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, she leads the bassoon studio at the University of Kansas, performs as a member of the Newfound Chamber Winds, and teaches 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; researching the artistic contributions of Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors; composing an autoethnographic album about historical trauma; leading virtual arts therapy sessions for internally displaced high schoolers in Ukraine; performing her sound art works about the World War II incarceration of her Japanese American family; collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma and Gabriela Lena Frank; facilitating arts-based group therapy for Ukrainian refugee parents in Poland; working with families to research and document lullabies of the Caucasus mountains (Georgia); designing trauma-informed arts curricula for youth and teens around the world who are coping with the stressors of poverty, transphobia, homophobia, war, family separation, homelessness, abuse, neglect, and grief.

Midori holds degrees in bassoon performance from The Juilliard School, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. This year, she will complete a Master of Social Work degree at the University of Michigan, where she focuses on trauma and crisis intervention.