2010 National Orchestra Honors Project

Toshiyuki Shimada

Toshiyuki Shimada is Music Director and Conductor of Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra in New London; Music Director and Conductor of the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes; and has been Music Director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra of Yale University since 2005. He is also Music Director Laureate of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, in Portland, Maine, for which he served as Music Director from 1986 to 2006. Prior to his Portland engagement, he was Associate Conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra for six years, beginning in 1981. Since 1998, he has also served as Principal Conductor of the Vienna Modern Masters record label in Austria.

Maestro Shimada has been a frequent guest conductor with a number of international orchestras, including the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra in Vilnius; the Orquesta Filharm—nico de Jalisco, Guadalajara, Mexico; the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, Karlovy Va?y (Karlsbad) Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Chamber Orchestra, the Slovak Philharmonic, N… TonkŸnstler Orchestra in Vienna, LÕOrchestre National de Lille in France, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival. He has also guest conducted the Houston Symphony, Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, San JosŽ Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Orchestra, Pacific Symphony Orchestra, New York Chamber Orchestra, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra in New London, CT and many other US and Canadian orchestras. On May and June, 2008, the Yale Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Shimada made a highly successful Italian tour performing in Rome, Florence, Bologna and Milan.

In addition to these activities, he has held the position of Artistic Adviser of the Tulare County Symphony Orchestra in California, of which he served from 2007 to 2009. Music Director of the Nassau Symphony Orchestra in New York, Music Director of the Cambiata Soloists, a contemporary music ensemble in Houston, Music Director of the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra at Rice University, and Music Director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra in Los Angeles.

He has collaborated with distinguished artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Andre Watts, Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Janos Starker, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Nadjia Salerno-Sonnenberg, Cho-Liang Lin, Sir James Galway, Evelyn Glennie, Barry Tuckwell, and Doc Severinsen.

Maestro Shimada has had the good fortune to study with many distinguished conductors of the past and the present, including Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Herbert Blomstedt, Hans Swarovsky, and Michael Tilson Thomas. He was a finalist in the 1979 Herbert von Karajan conducting competition in Berlin, and a Fellow Conductor in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, in 1983. In addition, he was named Ariel Musician of the Year in 2003 by Ariel Records, and received the ASCAP award in1989.

He has also consistently become an integral and beloved member of every community he joins, receiving the Portland Fire Department’s Merit Award, the Maine Publicity Bureau Cultural Award, and the Italian Heritage Society Cultural Award, and having a number of days named in his honor: Toshiyuki Shimada Day in Houston, TX,

Toshiyuki Shimada Week in Portland, Maine, and Toshiyuki Shimada Day in the State of Maine. In May 2006 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Fine Arts by the Maine College of Arts. At the Yale University, he has been selected as the Fellow of the Davenport College and a member of the Elizabethan Club.

He records with the Vienna Modern Masters label, and with the Moravian Philharmonic, and currently he has fifteen Compact Discs. He also records for the Capstone Records, the Querstand-VKJK (Germany) and the Albany Records. His recording of Gregory Hutter’s Skyscrapers has been released through the Naxos label.

Maestro Shimada is Co-Founder of the Summer Conducting Symposium in Leipzig, Germany, Currently and he holds a teaching position at the Yale University, as Associate Professor of Conducting with the Yale School of Music and the Department of Music. He lives in Connecticut, USA, with Eva Virsik, a concert pianist.

Sunner, 2009

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Please visit Toshiyuki Shimada’s web pages:
www.toshiyukishimada.com
www.myspace.com/toshishimada
tshimada@toshiyukishimada.com
ECSO: www.ectsymphony.com
mdecso@gmail.com
OSFL: www.osfl.org
toshi@osfl.org
YSO: www.yalesymphony.org

toshiyuki.shimada@yale.edu

Management for Japan and Germany
Artists International Management
www.artistsinternational.com
Contact: Birgit Schmid-Salm
Management for Czech Republic
Art Production
Contact: Lubomir Herza
lherza@iol.cz