Anne Prescott

Assistant Professor of Musicology;
Associate Director and Outreach Coordinator,
Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies

B.M., Cornell College (Iowa); M.M. and Ph.D., Kent State University

Anne Prescott’s primary research concentration is Japanese koto music and musicians. Her dissertation and other writings focus on Miyagi Michio’s achievements as a performer, composer and teacher. Dr. Prescott has been playing the koto since she was an undergraduate at Cornell College in Iowa, and she spent eight years in Japan studying koto and shamisen, including one year as a Japanese Ministry of Education-sponsored research student at Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku (Tokyo University of the Arts). She has performed in numerous concerts in Japan and the United States, and particularly enjoys introducing the koto to children in both countries. She has taught koto at Augustana College (Illinois) and in Bloomington, Indiana, and is in demand for lecture-demonstrations on incorporating Japanese music into the classroom for music teacher organizations and workshops throughout the United States.

My teaching philosophy is to begin where the students are, make teaching/learning a two-way street, and never give up on a student who demonstrates a sincere attempt to learn. I am a firm believer in an interdisciplinary approach: no discipline exists in a vacuum, and there are always connections between any two disciplines. To the extent possible, I want students to do and experience rather than passively sit in their seats.