Sayaka Shoji

Sayaka Shoji in Strasbourg, February 2014.

Sayaka Shoji (庄司紗矢香, Shōji Sayaka, born 30 January 1983) is a Japanese classical violinist. She was the first Japanese and youngest winner (after Lenuta Ciulei) at the Paganini Competition in Genoa in 1999.

She was born in Tokyo into an artistic family (her mother is a painter, grandmother is a poet) and spent her early childhood in Siena, Italy. Her family moved back to Japan when she was five years old: here she started studying the violin. At the age of fifteen she moved to Germany to study at Hochschule für Musik Köln under Zakhar Bron and graduated in 2004. Her other teachers have included Saschko Gawriloff, Uto Ughi and Shlomo Mintz.

In 1997, Shoji made her debut at Lucerne Festival and Musikverein in Vienna with Rudolf Baumgartner. Two years later, she took the First Prize at the 1999 Paganini Competition. Zubin Mehta has been her strong supporter. When 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 many prominent orchestras have invited Shoji, including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and WDR Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Lorin Maazel, Yuri Temirkanov, Myung-whun Chung and Semyon Bychkov.

Sayaka Shoji records with Deutsche Grammophon and performs on the 1729 "Recamier" Stradivarius on loan from Ryuzo Ueno, Honorary Chairman, Ueno Fine Chemicals Industry, Ltd.