midori

In the 2002-03 season, violinist Midori will celebrate her 20th year of performing before the public. Her performing schedule, balanced between recitals with Robert McDonald and appearances with the most prestigious symphonic ensembles, will take her to the great concert stages of Europe, North America and the Far East. The new season also marks the 10th anniversary of Midori & Friends, the non-profit organization Midori founded to bring free music instruction programs throughout the school year to thousands of children who need them. The violinist has been an exclusive Sony Classical artist throughout her career; this Fall, the label releases her latest recording French Violin Sonatas, featuring sonatas by Claude Debussy, Francis Poulenc and Camille Saint-Saëns, with pianist Robert McDonald.

appearances in the 2002-03 season will include performances with the major symphony orchestras of Atlanta, San Francisco, Houston, Boston, Chicago, Seattle and Philadelphia, plus the National Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra. In an unusual two-week residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Midori will play both the Barber and Sibelius violin concertos, and will participate in intensive educational and community outreach programs with orchestra members and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

debut at the age of 11 – the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta. Among the European orchestras Midori will perform with this season will be the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Berlin Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Bayerischer Staatsorchester. In 2002-03 Midori will do three recital tours. Two will take her to Europe, with performances in Vienna, Barcelona, Madrid, London, Hamburg and Brussels. In March of 2003, she visits eight cities on the East Coast of the U.S., culminating in a recital at New York's Carnegie Hall on March 29, 2003.

As part of Midori's 20th anniversary season, commemorative events have been planned throughout the world. The celebrations began in Japan in May 2002 as Midori played a major recital tour with pianist Robert McDonald.

She also initiated a unique series of concerts titled Total Experience, based on the Japanese concept of kizuna, or "human interconnectedness." All these appearances were in small towns all over Japan, and involved experimentation with thematic concepts and proactive audience participation. Throughout the 2002-03 season, Midori will also make it a point to perform with many of the international orchestras and in the key concert halls around the world which have played an important role in the development of her career.

Midori's 2001-02 season began with the National Symphony's season-opening gala in Washington, D.C., followed by a tour of Japan with the Pittsburgh Symphony, and appearances with the Munich Philharmonic, Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and New York Philharmonic. She continued her annual recital touring with Robert McDonald in the U.S. and many countries abroad, including France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Italy. Midori received two prestigious awards in the Fall of 2001: the coveted Avery Fisher Prize, which is bestowed on established artists in recognition of their career accomplishments and comes with a $50,000 cash award, and the “Instrumentalist of the Year” award from Musical America, the bible of the music industry.

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