Midori

Born

1971-10-25

Birthplace

Hirakata, Osaka Prefecture, Japan

Biography

Midori Goto (五嶋 みどり, Gotō Midori, born October 25, 1971), who performs under the mononym Midori, is a Japanese-born American violinist. She made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11 as a surprise guest soloist at the New Year's Eve Gala in 1982. In 1986 her performance at the Tanglewood Music Festival with Leonard Bernstein conducting his own composition made the front-page headlines in The New York Times. Midori became a celebrated child prodigy, and one of the world's preeminent violinists as an adult. Midori has been honored as an educator and for her community engagement endeavors. When she was 21, she established her foundation Midori and Friends to bring music education to young people in underserved communities in New York City and Japan, which has evolved into four distinct organizations with worldwide impact. In 2007, Midori was appointed as a UN Messenger of Peace. In 2018, she joined the violin faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music. She is also on the faculty of the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music serving as Distinguished Professor and Judge Widney Professor of Music. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. Midori was born Midori Goto in Osaka, Japan, on October 25, 1971. She dropped her father's surname from her stage name after her parents’ divorce in 1983, initially performing under the name Mi Dori, then deciding on the single word Midori. Her father was a successful engineer and her mother, Setsu Gotō, was a professional violinist. Setsu regularly took young Midori to her orchestra rehearsals where the toddler slept in the front row of the auditorium while her mother rehearsed. One day Setsu heard a two-year-old Midori humming a Bach concerto that had been rehearsed two days earlier. Subsequently, Midori often tried to touch her mother's violin, even climbing onto the bench of the family piano to try to reach the violin on top of the piano. On Midori's third birthday, Setsu gave her a 1/16 size violin and began giving her lessons. Midori gave her first public performance at the age of six, playing one of the 24 Caprices of Paganini in her native Osaka. In 1982 she and her mother moved to New York City, where Midori started violin studies with Dorothy DeLay at Pre-College Division of Juilliard School and the Aspen Music Festival and School. As her audition piece, Midori performed Bach's thirteen-minute-long Chaconne, generally considered one of the most difficult solo violin pieces. In the same year, she made her concert debut with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, a conductor with whom she would later record on the Sony Classical label. In 1986 came her legendary performance of Leonard Bernstein's Serenade at Tanglewood, conducted by Bernstein. During the performance, she broke the E string on her violin, then again on the concertmaster's Stradivarius after she borrowed it. She finished the performance with the associate concertmaster's Guadagnini and received a standing ovation. The next day's The New York Times front page carried the headline, "Girl, 14, Conquers Tanglewood with 3 Violins". ... Source: Article "Midori (violinist)" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.