Mayu Kishima

Mayu Kishima (born December 13, 1986) is a Japanese violinist. She is affiliated with Miyazawa Company and Watanabe Entertainment. She has won many major awards, beginning when she was a young child, and she began winning international awards in her teens.

Early life Kishima was born in Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, on December 13, 1986. She began studying the violin at the age of three and a half under the guidance of Izumi Hayashi. Kishima knew when she was very little she would become a violinist.

At the age of nine, she made her orchestral debut performing the first movement of Mendelssohn58's Violin Concerto with the Cojima Musica Collegia conducted by Hideo Kojima. In 1998, she won first place in the elementary school division of the 52nd All-Japan Student Music Competition in Osaka. She studied under Toshiya Eto, , Kazuyo Togami, and .

Between 1999 and 2002, she attended seminars in Yokohama with Zakhar Bron. In 2002, she received an international scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Culture. Since then, she has lived in Germany, studying violin under Professor Zakhar Bron at the Cologne University of Music. As a result, she toured the US and Europe with Rostropovich throughout 2005. The concerts were well-received in European and American newspapers. The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung commented, "Just as Karajan brought Anne-Sophie Mutter and Maazel brought Hilary Hahn to global attention, Rostropovich brought Kijima Mayu to the world." Conductor Seiji Ozawa has also attracted attention by inviting Kishima to join the Saito Kinen Orchestra and the Mito Chamber Orchestra, both of which he leads.

She has played with two Antonio Stradivari violins: the 1699 "Walner", specially loaned from the Munetsugu Collection by the NPO Yellow Angel, After studying abroad at the University of Cologne, she began to perform frequently throughout Europe, and she also gave concerts as a chamber musician.

On March 6, 2024, to commemorate the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen, IOWN APN held a remote music concert connecting Kanazawa and Tokyo, a distance of approximately 1,000 km, the longest in the world.

Recordings

Kishima has released two solo albums: Chaconne in 2008 and Rise in 2012, which was her second CD.

Personal life

In 2019, she married a company executive. She announced the marriage on the February 26, 2020, broadcast of the program "Kon'ya Kurabete Mita" (Nippon Television).

Significant awards 2001 – Top Prize (Junior Division) at the 8th Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition