Dr. Midori Samson (she/her) サムソンみどりis a bassoonist, educator, and social work researcher. In addition to her appointment at KU, she is a member of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and spends summers teaching 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; composing an autoethnographic piece for bassoon and electronics about the WWII incarceration of her Japanese American family; and leading virtual arts therapy sessions for internally displaced high schoolers in Ukraine. She holds degrees in bassoon performance from The Juilliard School, University of Texas, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is completing an additional degree in social work at the University of Michigan.