News

Midori recently posted two PSAs related to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

PSA 1: Practice Makes Perfect
PSA 2: From Home

You can find links here: https://www.facebook.com/GoToMidori/videos/1729312913878254/

As a United Nations Messenger of Peace since 2007, Midori has strongly supported the organization’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by all UN Member States in 2015 as part of a 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which set out a 15-year plan to achieve the Goals.
With just 10 years to go, an ambitious global effort is underway to deliver the 2030 promise by mobilizing more governments, civil society, businesses and calling on all people to make the Global Goals their own.
Midori appears on a newly-released postcard to promote the Decade of Action.

As she has done since 2006, Midori ends her calendar year with the International Community Engagement Program (ICEP) of her Japanese foundation MUSIC SHARING. While Christmas is being celebrated in many western countries at the end of December, the violinist and UN Messenger of Peace forms a quartet with three young musicians – this year Elina Buksha (violin), Erika Gray (viola) and Noémie Raymond-Friset (cello) – to share their music in Cambodia in an exchange with the local culture, especially with marginalized children and young people in disadvantaged areas of the country.
Since 2016, Midori and her young musician colleagues have maintained a MUSIC SHARING ICEP blog in which they relay their impressions. There you will also find biographies of the participating musicians and general information about the program and the foundation.
For videos from previous ICEP visits, please look on MUSIC SHARING’s YouTube channel .

Midori has been appointed to one of The Curtis Institute of Music’s named faculty chairs. She now holds the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies, previously held by Aaron Rosand.  Midori joined the faculty in 2018.
You can read the official announcement here.
 

On September 20 and 22, Midori and pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute performed recitals in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Ridgecrest, California as part of Midori’s non-profit organization Partners in Performance.
Since its founding in 2003, Partners in Performance has co-sponsored over three dozen chamber music programs throughout the United States with the goal of stimulating interest in classical music in smaller communities.
This year’s PiP recital repertoire includes works by Brahms, Fauré and Debussy.
 

Midori has been honored as a Great Immigrant by Carnegie Corporation of New York on America’s Independence Day.
Every year since 2006, on the Fourth of July, Carnegie Corporation honors the legacy of its founder, Andrew Carnegie, by recognizing a group of extraordinary men and women – naturalized citizens of the United States – who have made notable contributions to the progress of American society by enriching its communities and culture, strengthening its economy and invigorating its democracy.
Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie rose out of poverty to become one of the greatest contributors to American industry and philanthropy. Carnegie believed that the infusion of talent that immigrants bring to America keeps its society vibrant, a view that is borne out by the accomplishments of the nearly 600 individuals honored through the initiative to date.
Midori was one of thirty eight Great Immigrants honored in 2019.
Read about the Great Immigrant Program 

Midori takes part in several festivals and workshops in the summer of 2019:
She performs Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with the World Youth Symphony Orchestra under conductor Mei-Ann Chen at the Interlochen Center for the Arts (Michigan, USA) and the same concerto at the Domaine Forget International Festival in Québec (Canada) with the Orchestre symphonique de Québec under Yoav Talmi. She also gives master classes at the Domaine Forget Festival.
Midori gives master classes as well at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar (Germany), at Ravinia’s Summer Conservatory, the Ravinia Steans Music Institute (Illinois, USA) and at Krzyżowa Music, a vibrant five-year-old festival in Lower Silesia (Poland). In Weimar, in addition to individual and group lessons, the orchestra studio with the Jenaer Philharmonie and a participant concert at the end of the course, Midori and her students bring music to a hospice in the city.
At the Aspen Music Festival (Colorado, USA), she performs Schumann’s Violin Concerto with the Aspen Chamber Symphony under Erik Nielsen.