Mia Doi Todd

All Music Guide:

A singer and songwriter whose music embraces a rich variety of cultural and creative influences, Mia Doi Todd was born June 30 1975 in Los Angeles, California. Mia Doi Todd grew up in a creative household; her father, Michael Todd, is a sculptor of note, and her mother, Kathryn Doi Todd, is an Associate Justice in the California Court of Appeals as well as a patron of the arts who has helped bring traditional Japanese dance and theater troupes to Los Angeles. As a child, Mia became involved in theater and choral performance, and she studied classical vocal technique. As a teenager, she began writing songs, influenced by the work of the Beatles, Leonard Cohen, and particularly Joni Mitchell, and her work developed a keener focus when she moved east to attend Yale University and became interested in indie rock.

In 1997, members of the Los Angeles-based group Further invited Todd to use their studio to record her songs; the result was her debut album, The Ewe and the Eye, a spare set of performances featuring only her vocals and acoustic guitar, which was released on Further's Xmas Records label around the same time Todd was completing her studies. She then moved to New York City, where she recorded her second album, Come Out of Your Mine, for Communion Records. After a sojourn in Japan where Todd studied Ankoku Butoh dance, she returned to America and recorded a third album, 2001's Zeroone, a collection of longer and more intricate songs that she issued through her own City Zen Records imprint. Todd's music soon caught the attention of Sony's Columbia Jazz division, who signed her to a recording contract. Her fourth album, The Golden State, found her re-recording many of the songs from her first three albums with more expansive arrangements and production from Mitchell Froom and Yves Beauvais.

Not long after the album was released, Sony shuttered Columbia Jazz, but Todd, undaunted, continued exploring new musical perspectives on her next project, 2005's Manzanita. The album, released by Plug Research, featured performances by members of indie pop favorites Beachwood Sparks, noisy psych visionaries Dead Meadow, and dub enthusiasts Future Pigeon; a number of tracks from Manzanita were reworked on 2006's remix album La Ninja: Amor and Other Dreams of Manzanita, which also included four new songs. In 2008, Todd reactivated her City Zen label for her eighth album, GEA, in which she worked with a small acoustic ensemble and experimented with longer, more ambitious musical structures. In 2011, Todd returned with Cosmic Ocean Ship, a song cycle inspired by her spiritual and geographic journeys of the previous two years. When not busy with her work in music, Todd is a performer and choreographer with Body Weather Laboratory, a Los Angeles-based Butoh dance troupe.

Wikipedia:

Mia Doi Todd (born June 30 1975) is a musician from Los Angeles, California, United States.

Mia has collaborated with rock, electronica, and hip-hop musicians, contributing her voice to works by Dntel, Beachwood Sparks, Nobody, Adventure Time, Frausdots, Folk Implosion, The Mission, Saul Williams, Prefuse 73, Flying Lotus, vosotros, Winter Flowers, and others.

Biography [edit]

Doi Todd's divorced parents are sculptor Michael Todd and California Second District Court of Appeal Associate Justice Kathryn Doi Todd, who holds the distinction of being the first female Asian American judge in the United States. She is of Japanese descent on her mother's side.

Todd moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1993 to attend Yale University, where she majored in East Asian Studies. Her first album, The Ewe and the Eye, was recorded at the Spaceshed, the recording studio/garage belonging to the LA band Further. It came out on its label, Xmas Records, in the spring of 1997, as she was graduating from college. She moved to New York City and started playing in clubs. That fall, she recorded her second album, Come Out of Your Mine, which was released on the Communion Label in 1999.

She lived in Japan for most of 1998, studying Ankoku Butoh first with Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno and at Asubeustosu-kan, and then with Min Tanaka at Body Weather Farm. She speaks rudimentary Japanese. Returning home to Los Angeles, she recorded most of her next album, Zeroone, on a Power Mac G4 and started City Zen Records to release it in 2001.

Her first three albums were solo acoustic recordings. She then started to play with a band, which was called Los Cincos which later renamed itself Syncopation. Todd and the group did not record much together. She signed a contract with Columbia/SME Records and recorded The Golden State, culling songs from her previous albums. Mitchell Froom and Yves Beauvais helped her produce it. She recorded at the Sunset Sound Factory, and the album came out in the fall of 2002. For a year, she toured the US and Europe, on her own and then with Alaska! and Lou Barlow's Folk Implosion. Columbia chose at this time not to renew her contract.

Her fifth album, Manzanita, which was released in 2005, is also the Spanish name of a round-leaved bush with smooth, red bark and tiny, bell-shaped blossoms that grows throughout California and the Pacific Coast. She recorded in Lake Hollywood with Rob Campanella. Many of the songs were still just voice and guitar or piano. Neal Casal played guitar, Brent Rademaker played bass as well as some guitar and piano. On drums and percussion were Hunter Crowley, Ric Menck, and Nelson Bragg. Members of Dead Meadow and Beachwood Sparks made cameo appearances, and the entire band—Future Pigeon—backed her on the song "Casa Nova." Rob engineered the album and played electric guitar, piano, dulcimer, and mandolin.

An album of remixes, La Ninja: Amor and other dreams of Manzanita, appeared in April 2006 and also had three new tracks, including a cover of the Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood."

Mia Doi Todd has worked with Dntel on two songs, Anywhere Anyone, and Rock My Boat.

Mia Doi Todd's seventh album Gea was named as LA Weekly's Top-10 Recordings of 2008. Carlos Niño produced with Miguel Atwood Ferguson's orchestrations. Mia toured the US and Canada as guest artist for Jose Gonzalez.

In 2009 she released her first instrumental album, Morning Music, in collaboration with percussionist Andres Renteria, and guest starred in Becky Stark's web series Califunya!.

In 2011, she collaborated with José González on the track "Um Girassol Da Cor Do Seu Cabelo," and also contributed a version of the track "Canto de Iemanjá" for the Red Hot Organization's most recent charitable album "Red Hot+Rio 2." The album is a follow-up to the 1996 "Red Hot + Rio." Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues.