BU professor receives Order of Manitoba

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This article was published 12/05/2022 (1392 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Receiving notice of an Order of Manitoba investiture is the best welcome-home gift Megumi Masaki says she could ever receive.

After spending time in Zurich, Switzerland, the pianist, multimedia artist and Brandon University music professor returned home Wednesday to find out she was one of 12 people selected for the province’s highest honour.

Being named to the Order is not just a personal achievement for her, but one she said she is sharing with the university, her colleagues, students, family and the Japanese-Canadian community of Manitoba.

“I feel really privileged to express my feelings with others in the world, but I tell my students music is a superpower and you have that power to create change and go beyond the music experience and become a life transformative,” she said. “Hopefully, that is a positive experience to motivate and promote action.”

She credited her passion to fight for change from her father, Rev. Yoshimichi Masaki, whom she called an activist and academic and put her on a similar path.

Born in Japan, she came to Winnipeg at eight years old. She was already a pianist at the time and was touring by the age of 12. Since then, she said she has been promoting and championing Canadian and Manitoban music around the world.

Masaki has been a faculty member at Brandon University since 2006.

She has commissioned more than 70 original works thanks to inspiration from the Japanese-Canadian community in Manitoba, with a special mention to the Manitoba Japanese United Church and the Japanese Cultural Association in Winnipeg.

“They have shown me that music can be transformative and it can really help change our world to be an equitable place,” she said. “I have not only dedicated my work to not only creating new music and promoting the piano, but to promote dialogue and change.”

That relationship with music has transformed her as a person. Music gives a voice to marginalized people, Masaki said.

This sent her on a journey to understand her Japanese heritage and work with Indigenous elders to make space for their music at the university through the BU Indigenous Music Festival, which she founded with elders and Indigenous musicians. This initiative created an equal collaboration with the university and the community to deepen the understanding and right the wrongs experienced by Indigenous people throughout Canada’s history.

Related to her own work is a devotion to the advancement of Manitoba composer Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté’s music. Chief among those efforts is being the artistic director of the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition. Masaki said she had a deep relationship with the university and founded the competition to be a platform for emerging Canadian talent, as well as promote new Canadian and Manitoba compositions.

She isn’t the only music professor at the university who’s an Order of Manitoba member. Violinist and guest professor James Ehnes received an Order membership in 2019 for his work. Masaki said she is bemused that she is sharing the honour with one of her colleagues.

Her music endeavours are ongoing. Her next project, titled “Hearing Ice,” focuses on communities who face losing their cultures and livelihoods due to climate change. She is working with composers, elders and scientists in northern Manitoba, northern Ontario and the Northwest Territories to collect their personal stories to convey this is a crisis that is threatening to wipe out their cultures and ultimately the whole of society.

“I’m bringing the message that this is happening now and we are responsible to change now to save each other.”

She was nominated by Helen Norrie, who was married to former Winnipeg mayor Bill Norrie, a couple she said she was friends with for decades.

Aside from personal connections, she said there were numerous exchanges with Winnipeg’s Japanese sister city, Setagaya, for musical performances. Masaki said being Japanese-Canadian, she would be chosen to welcome delegates from Japan, as well as perform. She also toured around the world to celebrate and promote the relationships Canada has among musicians.

Having a member of faculty become a member of the Order is a great honour for the university and a testament to the quality of the education the school provides, Brandon University dean of music Greg Gatien stated in a news release.

“Megumi Masaki has been a leader in our faculty for years, crossing disciplinary boundaries in inventive and compelling ways and committing wholeheartedly to work that embodies truth and reconciliation,” he said.

“We are fortunate to have her in this community, and thrilled that her contributions she has made through such a distinguished career, are being recognized in this way. We are truly proud of our colleague, whose accomplishments and actions are part of what makes our School of Music such an amazing and inspiring place to work and study.”

Anyone can nominate a person for the Order of Manitoba, but the nominations are scrutinized by an advisory council that chooses the 12 best nominees, said Brad Robertson, chief of protocol for the Province of Manitoba. Those selected nominations are given to the lieutenant-governor of Manitoba for review. However, unless there is something egregiously wrong, he said, all are approved and contacted over their investiture.

The other 2022 investitures are Mohamed El Tassi, Andre Lewis, Andrew Paterson, Shirley Richardson, Desiree Scott, Darcy Ataman, James Eldridge, Doug Harvey, Leo Ledohowski, Alix Jean-Paul and Marcy Markusa.

Other Order of Manitoba members from the Brandon and Westman region include but are not limited to: Carmel Olson, former CEO of the Brandon Regional Health Authority in 2010; former NFL player Israel Idonije, originally from Lagos, Nigeria, and raised in Brandon, in 2014; former NHL player Sheldon Kennedy, who was born in Brandon and grew up in Elkhorn, in 2015; and Tina Jones, an entrepreneur born in Brandon and living in Virden, in 2020.

The investiture takes place in Winnipeg on July 14.

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