Social Worker
Bassoonist • Educator • Social Worker
While Midori’s primary focus has been bassoon performance and pedagogy, she is happiest engaging in projects with a social justice and social work approach. Having minored in social welfare during her doctoral studies, her dissertation research explored how musicians can operationalize social work theories as anti-racist and anti-oppressive music praxis. She has facilitated numerous musical social work projects that integrate social work principles of social justice, community organizing, trauma-informed care, and mental health advocacy into music teaching and performance.
Midori’s recent projects include researching the artistic contributions of Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors; composing an autoethnographic piece for bassoon and electronics about the World War II incarceration of her Japanese American family; co-writing a play with artists in Kigali to commemorate the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide; leading virtual art therapy sessions for internally displaced high schoolers in Ukraine; facilitating arts and music workshops with Ukrainian refugee mothers in Poland; working with families and parents in 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 and homophobia, immigration, homelessness, abuse and neglect, adoption, and grief.
To gain a more robust understanding of social work practice, Midori is completing a Master of Social Work degree at the University of Michigan. As part of her focus on interpersonal practice and trauma, she was a clinical therapy intern at Evergreen Coaching & Counseling (Illinois), and currently works as a crisis responder for Crisis Text Line. As a queer mixed-race Asian woman, her style as a clinician centers her empathy for experiencing the struggles of healing oneself and exploring identity. She is passionate about supporting clients who are coping with anxiety, depression, personality disorders, attachment, systemic societal issues, complex trauma, and intergenerational trauma. Sessions with her emphasize deep self-reflection, radical self-acceptance, positive reframing, and distress tolerance through narrative writing, grounding exercises, cognitive behavioral therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy.
She has immense gratitude for the agencies she has partnered with to facilitate musical social work projects; they have helped her become the clinician she is today: Miejsce Otwarte (Poland), Peace Corps Ukraine, Irene Taylor Trust and Music in Prisons (U.K.), Shanti Bhavan Children’s Project (India), Catarman National High School (Philippines), Rise and Shine Academy (Kenya), Umoja Youth Centre (Tanzania), Obras Sociales del Santo Hermano Pedro (Guatemala), Horizons for Homeless Children (Massachusetts), Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Massachusetts, Artists Striving to End Poverty (New York), Ruth Ellis Center (Michigan), Illinois Youth Center Chicago, BUILD Youth Center (Illinois), Notes for Peace (Illinois), Caledonia Senior Living (Illinois), RefugeeOne (Illinois), Open Doors for Refugees (Wisconsin), Goodman Community Center (Wisconsin), Payne County Youth Shelter (Oklahoma), enFAMILIA Family Services (Florida), and Alma de Mujer (Texas).
