: Thank you for that introduction. I'm honored to represent the many members of the American Musicological Society who have pursued research in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. I am also grateful for this opportunity to thank the librarians who have made our work possible. Many of my research projects over the years have led me to the library for this is the place where countless projects are launched and culminated. It is also the place that sparks ideas leading us to travel to other archives across the nation and the world. The vastness of the music division's collections sets the stage for dramatic moments of scholarly serendipity. During several research trips to the library over the past 15 years, I found myself encountering new topics that I had been unaware of before my visit. In fact, on a trip to canvas the music division's collection of Tin Pan Alley era sheet music for songs with Japan as their subject, I stumbled upon an opera entitled Sakura, which you will hear about later on. I am currently completing a historical study of the relationship between Japan and the United States as echoed and shaped by music. A good deal of this book is devoted to the impact of Japanese music and culture on the careers of specific American composers. The profound Japanese influence on the development of American modern architecture, painting, theater, design, gardening, and literature, has long been documented and celebrated in numerous publications and exhibitions. Less well known is the impact of Japanese traditional music in shaping American musical modernism. As early as 1882, the celebrated zoologist and japanophile Edward Sylvester Morse went into Japanese music as offering ideas that could take the 'Power of music in a new direction'. Morse's statement proved prophetic for numerous American composers have turned to Japan for inspiration as they sought to make music new over the past hundred years. The history of this cross-cultural musical interaction is documented in unpublished and published scores, manuscripts, photographs, and correspondence held often uniquely in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. Numerous American composers have responded in their music to the art and poetry of Japan as well as to the timbres, rhythms, and forms of, for example, the Japanese shakuhachi flute and Gagaku – the Ancient Court Ensemble Music. The works of these composers have repeatedly spurred me to investigate the relationship between cross-cultural influence and exotic representations. This music likewise challenges us to reconsider our understanding of modernism and to ask which styles and techniques might qualify in different periods as forms of modern American music. Today, I will focus on but four composers representing divergent periods, styles, and artistic outlooks who each traveled to Japan and whose approaches to creating modern music were shaped by this experience. The first, Henry Eichheim was one of the earliest American composers to pursue Asian music studies and was active in the teens and 1920's. The career of the prolific jazz band arranger and songwriter Claude Lapham was redirected toward Japan through one specific commission in 1933. The major American composer and educator Henry Cowell heard Japanese folk music as a child early in the century and travelled to Japan as a Cold War Cultural Ambassador later in life. And finally, Roger Reynolds lived in Japan between 1966 and 1969 and has maintained a deep personal connection to Japan ever since, collaborating with Japanese artistes and writing about the music of modern Japanese composers. These four American composers of the same gender and race, but from very different backgrounds one a classical violinist, the second a jazz band arranger, the third a home-schooled musical protégé, and the fourth, initially trained as an engineer were each based in California during formative periods in their careers. Each of these composers is also well represented in the collections of the Library of Congress, which include the recent deposit of the Reynolds Collection offering a timely opportunity to explore the impact of Japan and Japanese culture on the work and musical thought of this major contemporary figure. I will consider each of