Midori
About this Artist
Midori is a visionary artist, activist, and educator who explores and builds connections between music and the human experience and breaks traditional boundaries, which makes her one of the most outstanding violinists of our time. Her trailblazing performances, which exude style, beauty, intimacy, and intensity, are celebrated worldwide.
Midori has performed with the London, Chicago, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; the Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks; the Berlin and Vienna philharmonics; the Mahler Chamber Orchestra; and Festival Strings Lucerne, among others. She has collaborated with such outstanding musicians as Claudio Abbado, Emanuel Ax, Leonard Bernstein, Jonathan Biss, Constantinos Carydis, Elim Chan, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Mariss Jansons, Yo-Yo Ma, Susanna Mälkki, Joana Mallwitz, Antonello Manacorda, Zubin Mehta, Donald Runnicles, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Omer Meir Wellber.
Midori’s 2024/25 season opened with performances at the Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Hollywood Bowl, and Edinburgh International Festival. She returns to the Vienna Philharmonic to play Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 at the Musikverein and Wiener Konzerthaus, followed by a major tour with the orchestra to South Korea and Japan. Further highlights include appearances with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Seattle Symphony, and Gürzenich Orchestra. Midori also embarks on recital tours across Europe and North America.
Her diverse discography includes the 2020 recording with the Festival Strings Lucerne of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and two Romances on Warner Classics and a Grammy Award-winning recording of Hindemith’s Violin Concerto with Christoph Eschenbach conducting the NDR Symphony Orchestra as well as Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin filmed at Köthen Castle for Accentus. Marking the 40th anniversary of her professional debut, Midori released a landmark recording of Beethoven sonatas performed with Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Warner Classics).
Deeply committed to furthering humanitarian and educational goals, she has founded several nonprofit organizations. Midori & Friends, now with over 30 years of service, provides music programs for New York City youth and communities, and MUSIC SHARING, a Japan-based foundation, brings both Western classical and Japanese music traditions to children and adults in Japan and throughout Asia. For her Orchestra Residencies Program (ORP), Midori commissioned composer Derek Bermel to write a new piece, Spring Cadenzas, which was premiered (mostly virtually) by student orchestras in 2021 and continues to be performed by ORP participants. Through Partners in Performance (PiP), Midori co-presents chamber music concerts around the US, focusing on smaller communities that are outside the radius of major urban centers and have limited resources. In 2022, Midori appeared in Carnegie Hall’s benefit Concert for Ukraine.
In recognition of her work as an artist and humanitarian, Midori serves as a United Nations Messenger of Peace. She is a recipient of the Asian Cultural Council’s 2021 John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award and the 2020 Brahms Prize from the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Society. In recognition of her lifetime of contributions to American culture, Midori is a Kennedy Center Honoree and was celebrated by Yo-Yo Ma, Bette Midler, and John Lithgow, among others, during the May 2021 ceremony.
Midori was born in Osaka in 1971 and began her violin studies with her mother, Setsu Goto. In 1982, conductor Zubin Mehta invited the then 11-year-old Midori to perform in the New York Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Eve concert, laying the foundation for her career. Midori is the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music and a Distinguished Visiting Artist at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Midori is the newly appointed Artistic Director of Ravinia Steans Institute’s Piano & Strings program, overseeing the program since summer 2024.
Midori plays the 1734 Guarnerius del Gesù “ex-Huberman.” She uses four bows: two by Dominique Peccatte, one by François Peccatte, and one by Paul Siefried.