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Guest Artist Bio

Midori

At these concerts, the violinist Midori returns to Portland to perform with the Oregon Symphony for the first time since April 2001. The concerts are part of a 2009/10 season for Midori that blends an ambitious international performance schedule with innovative community-engagement initiatives. Her season includes seven recital tours; other concerto appearances with such partners as Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony, 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 substantial time to several community-directed initiatives she has established to address an issue she believes to be of crucial importance: access. She feels passionately that people must have access to great music, regardless of 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 goals shared by the United Nations.

The first organization she founded, Midori & Friends, started in 1992 in response to serious cutbacks in music education in New York City schools; over the past 17 years, more than 160,000 children have benefited from this program. Midori & Friends provides comprehensive music education to children who might not otherwise have any involvement in the arts.

From the money she won as part of the prestigious 2001 Avery Fisher Prize, in 2003 Midori created Partners in Performance. The aim of PiP is to broaden the audience for chamber music by bringing high-profile chamber music performances to community-based organizations in small towns across the United States. Her devotion to music education also involves her work at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music, where Midori holds the prestigious Jascha Heifetz Chair in Violin and serves as professor and chair of the strings department.

Midori now records exclusively for Sony Masterworks, which issued two Midori releases in 2008 – an album joining sonatas of J.S. Bach and Bela Bartók and a two-disc compilation called The Essential Midori.

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, where she received a standing ovation and the impetus to begin a major career.

Midori lives in Los Angeles. Her violin is the 1734 Guarnerius del Gesu, the "ex-Huberman," which is on lifetime loan to her from the Hayashibara Foundation. More information online: gotomidori.com

 

 

 

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