Immigrant of the Day: Midori

Midori Goto is a violinist born on October 25, 1971 in Osaka, Japan. She is usually referred to simply as “Midori.”

Midori was first taught the violin by her mother, Setsu Goto, who discovered her daughter’s innate musicality at the age of two, when she found Midori humming a Bach theme she had rehearsed a few days earlier.  Midori gave her first public performance at the age of seven, playing a piece from the 24 Caprices of Paganini. She and her mother moved to New York in 1982, and started violin studies under the renowned instructor Dorothy DeLay at Julliard.

As her audition piece, Midori performed the 13-plus minute long Chaconne by Bach in its entirety (generally considered to be one of the most difficult solo violin pieces ever written). In the same year, she made her concert debut New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, a conductor with whom she would record many concertos on the Sony Classical label. In 1986 would come her now legendary performance at Tanglewood. An astonishing success, she broke the E-string on her violin twice (she had to borrow violins from the concertmaster and associate concertmaster), and had Leonard Bernstein, the conductor, kneeling before her in awe. The next day the New York Times front page carried this headline: “Girl, 14, Conquers Tanglewood with 3 Violins.”

When Midori was 15 years old, she decided to leave Juilliard. In 1992, she formed Midori & Friends, a non-profit organization that aims to bring quality music education to inner-city children in New York City. In 2001, Midori received the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, an award issued to outstanding musicians only once a year, if at all. With the award money, she started a foundation program called Partners in Performance. In the following years Midori has inaugurated two further community-based projects called the University Residencies Program and the Orchestra Residencies Program. In 2000, Midori graduated from New York University`s Gallatin School magna cum laude where she studied Psychology; subsequently earning a Master’s Degree in Psychology from NYU a few years later.

Midori has been appointed to the Jascha Heifetz Chair in Music at USC’s Thornton School of Music. Previously, she was on the faculty at Manhattan School of Music. Midori is also a board member of the American String Teachers Association.

For more about Midori, click here.

KJ