Midori

Midori ranks among the elite tier of contemporary violinists. Having begun as a child prodigy, she has sustained an extensive schedule of concerts and recordings devoted to the core violin literature spanning Bach through Bartók.

Born Midori Goto in Osaka, Japan, on October 25, 1971, she took up the violin at age three on a one-sixteenth-size instrument under the guidance of her mother, violinist Setsu Goto, who first detected the toddler’s ability after hearing her reproduce Bach melodies days after attending a rehearsal. Midori gave her first public performance in Osaka at six. Arriving in the United States in 1981, she studied with Dorothy DeLay at both the Aspen Music School and the Juilliard School, while Pinchas Zukerman served as an informal mentor. At ten she appeared with the New York Philharmonic on its New Year’s Eve concert in 1982; collectors supplied an original Stradivarius that remains her instrument, and conductor Zubin Mehta arranged an Asian tour with the orchestra. That same year she signed with CBS Masterworks, later Sony Classical, establishing her international profile. Following her parents’ divorce she relinquished her surname, briefly styling herself Mi Dori before adopting the present spelling. At fourteen a Central Park performance with the Philharmonic placed her on the front page of the New York Times, and favorable coverage continued through her teenage years. Teachers and listeners alike marveled at her command of technically demanding pieces such as Paganini’s 24 Caprices for solo violin, Op. 1, which she recorded in 1988.

Having moved beyond prodigy status, Midori secured a lasting place among the leading international concert attractions. Early associations with Mehta gave way to collaborations with additional conductors and ensembles around the world. Though long identified with the standard violin-concerto literature from Bach to Bartók, she expanded her activities, beginning with recitals—one given at Carnegie Hall in 1990 was subsequently recorded—then chamber music, including a 2008 trio tour with pianist Jonathan Biss and cellist Johannes Moser, and commissions for new compositions. Alongside her performing career she established the nonprofit Midori and Friends to deliver educational programs and concerts to disadvantaged and hospitalized children; by 2020 the initiative had reached more than 250,000 students. She later created the community-focused chamber-music organization Partners in Performance and its Japanese counterpart, Music Sharing, extending her outreach to places such as Indonesia. Her honors encompass both artistic and humanitarian distinctions, among them the Avery Fisher Prize in 2001 and designation in 2007 by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon as a U.N. Messenger of Peace.

Midori has issued more than twenty albums. Departing Sony Classical in the late 2000s, she recorded for Ondine and Onyx Classics, releasing on the latter label a complete set of Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin in 2015, among other projects. In 2020 she joined Warner Classics and made her first recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61. A magna cum laude bachelor’s graduate of New York University in 2000 and master’s recipient there in 2005, both in psychology, she has taught at the University of Southern California since 2005 and joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 2018.