Violinist Midori Receives 2025 ASTA Artist Teacher Award

The Japanese-American violinist now joins a list of renowned award recipients 

Founded in 1946, the American String Teachers Association (ASTA) provides teaching resources, education, and events to support music educators and professional artists. 

Each year, its Board of Directors presents the ASTA Teacher Award to a pedagogue of renowned stature from North America — the 2025 recipient is the Japanese-born American violinist, Midori Gotō. 

Midori made her debut at age 11 with the New York Philharmonic at the invitation of Zubin Mehta. Recently, she celebrated her 40th anniversary season by releasing a disc of the complete Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet on the Warner Classics label.

Additionally, she is the founder of the New York City-based Midori & Friends, the Japan-based MUSIC SHARING, as well as the Orchestra Residencies Program (ORP), and Partners in Performance (PiP).

Among her accolades include being honored as a United Nations Messenger of Peace and being named in the 2021 Kennedy Center Honors. She also holds honorary doctorates from Smith College, Yale University, Longy School of Music, and Shenandoah University.

In addition to performing and recording regularly, she serves as the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and as the Distinguished Visiting Artist at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.

Since the summer of 2024, she has been the newly appointed artistic director of Ravinia Steans Music Institute’s Program for Piano & Strings.

Midori plays the 1734 “ex-Huberman” Guarnerius del Gesù violin, and uses four bows: two by Dominique Peccatte, one by François Peccatte, and one by Paul Siefried.