Miwa Nishio aka Miwa Gemini is a Japanese born singer-songwriter.  She has been playing music and singing ever since she can remember and knew she wanted to live in New York City when she was only 10 years old.  It took some twists and turns though, including a brief stint in Ohio and even more brief stint in Los Angeles, a short-lived fling with photography, an all girl punk rock band, to finally lead Miwa to be where she always wanted to be - playing and creating her own music in New York City.

She has traveled all over the United States and Canada, sometimes by herself and sometimes with a band.  Her band has been an ever-changing colorful cast and with different instruments coming and going, but since 2012, Rebekah Allen has been an integral part of her creativity and performance.  Rebekah and Miwa met through playing with Main Squeeze Orchestra, an all female accordion orchestra.  But neither of them plays accordion for Miwa Gemini (Miwa plays guitar and Rebekah plays trumpet.)

Miwa took a brief break with the birth of her son but now she’s ready to embark on new adventures.  She’s about to launch her 4th album (something that’s been in the makings for the last 3 years) and a new project: 52 covers for 52 weeks where she will be posting a video of a cover song every week for one year.

Her new album takes on a new direction.  She is collaborating with a much bigger group of amazingly talented people - her previous albums has been recorded mainly with her and an engineer.  And the new album features harmony, lots of harmony - something she hasn’t explored much before which is funny since she spent much of her teenage years singing in a choir. 

Her song writing remains eclectic as before drawing inspiration from unexpected places, such as, Jack Kerouac, Sherlock Holmes, a Woody Allen movie to name a few.  Also a trapeze artist name Miss Scarlet and her best friend circus elephant name Zoe who are Miwa’s imaginary friends.  She has many imaginary friends.

Recently Miwa wrote a theme song for the actor Steve Buscemi’s oddball talk show Park Bench.  When Miwa wrote “What a Life” she recorded on her iPhone to send to the production company, unbeknownst her, the production team sent it to Steve and he really liked the song, so much so that it became the theme song.  Even though the song was recorded properly afterwards but Steve really loved the original iPhone recording and that’s the one used in the show.  Since then she has contributed a threw of songs for Park Bench.  Miwa and Rebekah also appear on the show as part of Main Squeeze Orchestra.