Carnegie Hall

Midori is a visionary artist, activist, and educator who explores and builds connections between music and the human experience while breaking with traditional boundaries. She marks the 40th anniversary of her debut this season, celebrating a remarkable career that began in 1982, when she first performed with the New York Philharmonic at age 11.

This anniversary season, Midori records the complete Beethoven violin sonatas with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet on Warner Classics. Coinciding with the new release, they perform all 10 sonatas over three concerts at Dartmouth College and a single concert of three sonatas in Chicago. She also appears with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Erie Philharmonic, Toledo Symphony, and Glacier Symphony in Montana. Her European engagements include Brahms’s Violin Concerto at the Moritzburg and Schleswig-Holstein festivals; a residency with the Symphony Orchestra of the Volksoper Vienna; an appearance with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin; chamber music concerts in Cologne, Hamburg, and London; and solo programs of works by J. S. Bach at major German festivals in Dresden, Bonn, and Ludwigsburg.

Midori’s diverse discography includes a 2020 recording with the Lucerne Festival Strings on Warner Classics, a Grammy Award–winning recording of Hindemith’s Violin Concerto with Christoph Eschenbach conducting the NDR Sinfonieorchester, and Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin filmed at Köthen Castle, which was also recorded for release on DVD (Accentus).

Deeply committed to furthering humanitarian and educational goals, Midori has founded several nonprofit organizations. Midori & Friends provides music programs for New York City youth and communities, and MUSIC SHARING brings music to children and adults in Japan and throughout Asia. Her other organizations focus on student orchestras and chamber music in rural communities. In recognition of her work as an artist and humanitarian, Midori serves as a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Last season, she delivered the Kim and Judy Davis Dean’s Lecture in the Humanities at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute (about nonprofit leadership and volunteering), and she was awarded the Asian Cultural Council’s John D. Rockefeller III Award. In recognition of her lifetime of contributions to American culture, she is a Kennedy Center honoree.

Midori was born in Osaka in 1971 and began her violin studies with her mother, Setsu Goto. A member of the faculties at the Curtis Institute and Peabody Institute, she plays the 1734 Guarnerius del Gesù “ex-Huberman.”