Where are you from originally?
Sapporo, Japan. I am proud of my hometown where Leonard Bernstein started the famous Pacific Music Festival (PMF) in which I myself got to participate as a young musician.
How many years in the symphony?
15 years
Hobbies?
Quilting. I started making masks for my family due to the pandemic last year. Then I decided to be more adventurous and make bigger, more intricate things. It has been a great challenge and lots of fun.
How has being a member of the ASO connected you to our community?
I realize the ASO is a lot more connected to our community than one might imagine. I am often recognized as an ASO musician on many occasions, in some of the most unexpected places. That is always a good feeling.
Scariest orchestra moment?
As the principal second violinist of the orchestra, I get to see all of our soloists just from a few feet away right in front of me during concerts. With the advancement of technology, many musicians opt to use electronic tablets for music instead of the traditional sheet music. On one such occasion, I saw the soloist’s tablet app crashed. Fortunately, the incident happened during the orchestra interlude and the soloist managed to restart the app just in time for his next entrance. That was the moment I decided that I will just stick with paper music.
Musical hero?
Henryk Szeryng, the Polish violinist. When I started taking violin seriously, I fell in love with his recordings such as Handel sonatas and Bach solo sonatas and partitas. Since he lived in Mexico, I even decided that I would move there to study with him as a young girl. Shortly after I knew of Mr. Szeryng, I was shocked to see in the news that his concert in Japan got cancelled because he passed away.