Toshiyuki Shimada

Guest Conductor on March 22, 2009

TOSHIYUKI SHIMADA 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. In addition, he is Music Director and Chief Creative Officer of the Trinity Music Partners, LLC, which holds the worldwide rights to the Vatican Library Music Collection. He has just been appointed as Artistic Adviser of the Tulare County Symphony Orchestra in California.

Maestro Shimada has been a frequent guest conductor with a number of European orchestras, including the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra in the Czech Republic, Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Chamber Orchestra, the Slovak Philharmonic, NO Tonkunstler Orchestra in Vienna, L'Orchestre 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 Jose Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Orchestra, Pacific Symphony Orchestra, New York Chamber Orchestra, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and many other US and Canadian orchestras.

In addition to these activities, he has held the position of 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, Emanual 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. Maestro Shimada 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.

Maestro Shimada records with the Vienna Modern Masters label, and with the Moravian Philharmonic, and currently he has thirteen Compact Discs: VMM 3043, 3044, 3047, 3048, 3049, 3050, 3052, 3053, 3057, 3059, 4001, 4002 and 4004. Two more Compact Discs will be released in the 2006-07 season. He also records for the Capstone Records: CPS-8731 , the Querstand-VKJK (Germany) and the Albany Records: Troy646. His recording of Gregory Hutter's Skyscrapers has just been released through the Naxos label.

Currently he holds a teaching position at the Yale University, as Associate Professor of the Yale School of Music and the Department of Music, and resides in the suburb of New Haven, Connecticut with his wife Eva Virsik, a concert pianist, and their sixteen year old son.