Midori Performs Mendelssohn with ASO on 4/15,16-17

Midori  Violin




In the 2009-2010 season, violinist Midori blends an ambitious international performance schedule with innovative community engagement initiatives, both at home and abroad. Her itinerary will include seven recital tours, including dates in Dublin, Budapest, San Francisco, Toronto, Baltimore and Tokyo; numerous concerto appearances with such partners as Sir Colin Davis and the LSO, Leonard Slatkin with the Detroit Symphony, and the Bayerischer Rundfunk with Mariss Jansons; her third all-new music tour; and an International Community Engagement Program in Mongolia.

Midori continues to devote a substantial amount of time to several community-directed initiatives** she has established to address an issue she believes to be of crucial and ever-growing importance: access. Midori feels passionately that people must have access to a variety of great music, regardless of their age, race, social class, geographic location, or financial means. In 2007 Midori was designated an official U.N. Messenger of Peace by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who cited her community engagement work as a model of exemplary commitment to worldwide goals shared by the U.N.

The first organization she founded to tackle this issue was **Midori & Friends, started in 1992 in response to serious cutbacks in music education in New York City schools; over the last 17 years, over 160,000 children have benefitted from this program. Midori & Friends provides comprehensive music education (including instrument instruction and general music instruction), workshops and concerts to children who might not otherwise have the opportunity for involvement in the arts. The foundation is now partnered with numerous public schools in New York City. Midori performs at many of the schools, and so also do musicians representing other musical genres, from jazz players to African drummers to Chinese flutists, and more. Midori & Friends now also presents an all-day children's music festival annually in New York City.

Midori has also founded a similar organization in Japan, **Music Sharing. Based in Tokyo, Music Sharing was established in 2002 to raise cultural awareness and to contribute to a well-rounded education for children in Japan and other Asian countries. Music Sharing seeks to provide a nurturing environment while helping children experience music as an authentic, active means of expression; the program supplements standard music curricula with live presentations of Western classical and traditional Japanese music to children in schools, hospitals and special institutions. Since its inception, Music Sharing's programs have included a Visiting Concert Program, a Traditional Japanese Music Program and an Orchestra Visit Program, with Midori and other professional musicians as participating artists. Other particularly successful initiatives have been the Instrumental Instruction for the Disabled Program, and the International Community Engagement Program (ICEP). ICEPs have been conducted in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia. In December 2009, Midori will lead an ICEP in Mongolia.

From the money she won as part of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize (2001), in 2003 Midori created another non-profit organization, **Partners in Performance. The aim of &quotiP" is to broaden the audience for chamber music by bringing high profile chamber music performances to small community-based organizations in the U.S. Among the communities where PiP has been presented since its inception are Randolph, Vermont; Manasquan, New Jersey; Plymouth, New Hampshire; Reno, Nevada; Barron, Wisconsin; Richland, Washington; McHenry, Maryland; and five small communities in Montana, Minnesota and Missouri. In the 2009-10 season, Midori will conduct Partners in Performance programs in Bemidji, Minnesota and Shenandoah Valley, Virginia.

2004-2005 marked the inauguration of Midori's **Orchestra Residencies Program, in which she spends a week with a local youth orchestra which has ties to a small professional orchestra; Midori performs with both orchestras, coaching young musicians, appearing at benefits and subscription series concerts and working with both orchestras to raise arts awareness within the community. Orchestra Residencies Programs have been conducted in Alaska (Fairbanks and Anchorage), Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont, Montana, South Dakota, North Carolina, Iowa, Illinois and Alabama. In 2009-2010, there will be Orchestra Residencies in Louisiana and North Dakota.

Midori's devotion to music education involves not only her extensive community engagement efforts but a deep commitment to her work at the University of Southern California. At USC's Thornton School of Music, Midori holds the prestigious Jascha Heifetz Chair, and also serves as Chair of the Strings Department. As such, in addition to her administrative duties at USC, she provides private violin instruction and chamber music coaching to her students. Midori actively performs with her students both on and off campus. In addition and on an ongoing basis, Midori enjoys working with young violinists in master classes all over the world.

Midori and violinist Vadim Repin have joined forces in a new initiative, the Midori/Repin Commissioning Project. Through the leading commissioning organization Meet the Composer, individual donors have commissioned four solo works, each four minutes in length, to be used by the violinists as encores and in personal appearances in a variety of contexts, including fundraising events, media promotion and community work. Midori and Repin have chosen four composers whose work they admire, and of the first group of compositions to be commissioned, three have been completed: Passeggiata by Lee Hyla, Gypsy Melody by Rodion Shchedrin, and Capriccio by Krzysztoff Penderecki. A fourth work, by Derek Bermel, is forthcoming. To date, the commissioners include Susan V. Carson, Kathleen Henschel, Barrett Wissman, and Crystal Arts. Among the premieres Midori will be performing at her recital in San Francisco in February 2010 will be Penderecki's Capriccio.

Midori made her first recording at the age of 14 for Philips - she played music of Bach and Vivaldi with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Pinchas Zukerman. She now records exclusively for Sony Masterworks, which issued two Midori releases in 2008 - an album joining sonatas of J.S.Bach (Unaccompanied No.2 in A minor) and Bartók (No.1 in C-sharp minor, with pianist Robert McDonald); and a 2-CD compilation of catalogue material, The Essential Midori. In 2003 Sony Classical released Midori's recording of the Bruch G minor and Mendelssohn E minor concertos, recorded live with the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Mariss Jansons. This recording won Germany's coveted Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, as did her recording of French recital repertoire with pianist Robert McDonald. The first Super Audio CD issued by Sony Classical featured Midori's recording of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, K.320d, with violist Nobuko Imai, as well as the reconstructed Concerto in D Major for Violin and Piano (K.315f) with Christoph Eschenbach as both pianist and conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra. Other concerto recordings include a disk pairing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No.1, both recorded live with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic; the Dvorák Violin Concerto with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic, also recorded live; the two Bartók Violin Concertos with the Berlin Philharmonic under Mr. Mehta; and the Sibelius Violin Concerto with Bruch's Scottish Fantasy, with Mr. Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic. Among Midori's other Sony Classical CDs is a Grammy-nominated recording of the Paganini Caprices for Solo Violin. Midori's recorded collaborations with Robert McDonald include a recording of the Elgar and Franck sonatas, an album of French sonatas, and Encore!, a collection of virtuoso showpieces. Sony's live recording of Midori's Carnegie Hall recital debut (October 1990), is also available on CD.

In 2004, Midori joined the ranks of published authors with the release in Germany of a memoir titled Einfach Midori (Simply Midori), for the publisher Henschel Verlag.

Midori was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1971 and began studying the violin with her mother, Setsu Goto, at a very early age. In 1982, when Zubin Mehta first heard her play, he was so impressed that he invited her to be a surprise guest soloist for the New York Philharmonic's traditional New Year's Eve concert, on which occasion she received a standing ovation and the impetus to begin a major career.

Midori lives in Los Angeles. In 2000, she received her bachelor's degree in Psychology and Gender Studies at the Gallatin School of New York University, graduating magna cum laude, and in 2005 received her Master's degree in Psychology. Away from school and the concert hall, Midori enjoys reading, writing and attending the theater.

Her violin is the 1734 Guarnerius del Gesu "ex-Huberman", which is on lifetime loan to her from the Hayashibara Foundation. She uses three bows, two by Dominique Peccatte and the third by François Peccatte.

For more information about Midori, call 831-620-1332, and visit www.GoToMidori.com and www.kathrynkingmedia.com.