Miya Otake is an active harpist contributing her talent as a performer, educator, and adjudicator. She is based in Vancouver, Canada and her music career has flown her around the globe including Asia, Australia, Europe, Russia, North & South America. She enjoys collaborating with her sister Kaori Otake as a harp duo appearing as a guest performer at the famous stages such as Isaac Stern Auditorium at the Carnegie Hall in New York, USA, Rio International Harp Festival in Brazil, and at the Mariinsky Theatre performing Double Concerto with the Mariinsky Orchestra in St. Petersburg, Russia for the Northern Lyra International Music Festival.
Miya is a graduate of Royal Academy of Music in London, England, where she completed her Postgraduate Advanced Studies in harp. She has won countless awards, medals, trophies studying under Uvic Professor Taka Kling and was a scholarship student at Victoria Conservatory and Vancouver Academy of Music where she currently teaches along with Langley Community Music School, Showcase Academy, Chilliwack Music Academy and Aoyama Harp Studio.
Her students are scholarship and prize winners of the Mexico International Harp Competition, Elite International Music Competition, Crescendo International Music Competition, Vancouver International Music Competition, Quebec International Music Competition, KPU International Music Festival/ Fraser Valley Kiwanis Music Festival & Vancouver Kiwanis Music Festival appearing at the prestigious stages from Vancouver Orpheum Theatre to New York’s Famous Carnegie Hall.
She is a certified RCM Teacher and has been awarded the Teacher’s Certificate of Recognition by the Royal Conservatory of Music for her student’s continuous success in scoring the highest mark for RCM exams provincially and nationally. Her students are invited to perform at the annual recitals and awarded at the Chan Centre in UBC. Her graduate students have been accepted at UBC, UBC-O, McGill University, Columbia University and Stanford University.
Miya’s teachers include Elisabeth Fontan-Binoche: Nice Conservatoire, Marisa Robles, Skaila Kanga, Daphne Boden: Royal Academy of Music, and Taka Kling: Uvic & Victoria Conservatory, and Lanalee de Kant: VAM and she has also taken countless masterclasses with world’s renown harpists. With her connections to the leading harpists of the world, she invites and helps organize masterclasses and concerts as a board of directors for the associations such as Westcoast Harp Society/American Harp Society B.C. Chapter, Vancouver International Music Competition, Canadian Music Competition and Müzewest Concerts. She is also an adviser for the Kiwanis Music Festival and KPU International Music Festival.
Resident harpist of the Chilliwack Symphony Orchestra, she also freelances with other local orchestras such as Abbotsford Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, Vancouver Philharmonic Orchestra, Richmond Symphony Orchestra, White Rock Symphony Orchestra, Fraser Valley Symphony, Vancouver Island Symphony and Okanagan Symphony. Her students also collaborate with some of the orchestras mentioned above as well as Youth Orchestras in Vancouver, Richmond, Delta, Surrey, Coquitlam, and VAM Orchestra.
A founder and director of award winning Westcoast Harp Ensemble and Kits Wings Harp Ensemble, she arranges the members to appear at local talent shows, fashion shows, festivals and competitions and they have been asked to perform at the Welcome Home Party for the Canadian Rock Star Bryan Adams.
Being a Rotarian, she gives back to the society by performing for charity and fundraising events as well as providing her students performance opportunities for the Children’s Wish Foundation, Canuck Place Children’s Hospice Foundation, Children’s Cancer Foundation, Social Diversity for Children Foundation, BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, VGH and UBC Hospital Foundation, Lions Gate Hospital, and Peace Arch Hospital and local retirement homes at their special events.
Miya is also a director of Aoyama Harp of Canada Ltd. importing quality harps from Japan.