Sayaka Shoji

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Sayaka Shoji (庄司紗矢香, Shōji Sayaka^?, 1983 January 30 -) is a Japanese classical violinist. She is the first Japanese and youngest winner at the Paganini Competition in Genoa in 1999.

She was born into an artistic family (her mother is a painter, grandmother is a poet) and spent her childhood in Siena, Italy. She studied at Hochschule für Musik Köln under Zakhar Bron and graduated in 2004. Her other teachers have included Sashko Gawrillow, Uto Ughi and Shlomo Mintz.

Zubin Mehta has been her strong supporter. When Ms. Shoji auditioned for him in 2000, he immediately changed his schedule in order to make her first recording with the Israel Philharmonic possible in the following month, then invited her to perform with Bavarian State Opera and Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Since then Ms.Shoji is regularly invited to many prominent orchestras, including the Israel Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and WDR Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Lorin Maazel, Yuri Temirkanov and Semyon Bychkov.

Sayaka Shoji records with Deutsche Grammophon and performs on the 1715 "Joachim" Stradivarius on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.