Erika Oba is a composer, pianist/flutist, and educator based in the SF Bay Area. As a composer she has written works for jazz ensembles, chamber groups, dance, and theater. She has been commissioned by groups such as the Del Sol String Quartet, Fresno Philharmonic, Shotgun Players, and Sharp and Fine. She is active as a performer on both piano and flute, and performs with her own groups the Erika Oba Trio, Rice Kings, and The Sl(e)ight Ensemble. She has performed in a wide variety of ensembles with musicians such as Meredith Monk, Peter Apfelbaum, Hitomi Oba, Lisa Mezzacappa, Jean Fineberg, Jon Jang, Francis Wong, and many other jazz and experimental musicians. In addition to her own private teaching studio, she is a private jazz piano instructor for UC Berkeley’s Music Department and a resident music director with Berkeley Playhouse’s Youth Conservatory Program. 

Past artistic projects include a collaboration with choreographer Sammay Dizon, through the Red Poppy Art House’s inaugural Crossover Residency program in 2016. She was also a performer fellow with Giant Steps Music Action Lab in 2017, during which she collaborated with an international group of musicians and recorded the album What If. In 2018, she was a composer fellow with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music and worked with the Del String Quartet. She was a 2023-24 fellow in the inaugural cohort of the Asian Improv Arts Fellowship program. 

As an artist, she is interested in exploring cultural practice in diaspora, performance as ritual, and music as a vehicle for exploring our relationships to our communities, histories, and biosphere. She received her BM in Jazz Piano Performance from Oberlin Conservatory and her MA in Music Composition from Mills College.