Recent seasons have seen Sayaka tour with the Bamberg Symphony with Jonathan Nott, Tokyo Philharmonic under Myung-Whun Chung, WDR Symphony with Semyon Bychkov and the St Petersburg Philharmonic under Yuri Temirkanov with whom she enjoys a close musical relationship.
Highlights in 2007/08 included her début with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Järvi, a return to the London Symphony Orchestra with Temirkanov, and a re-invitation to the Salle Pleyel to perform the Stravinsky Violin Concerto with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Myung-Whun Chung. The current season sees her perform with the La Scala Philharmonic and Verdi Orchestra in Milan, on tour with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic with Temirkanov and she’ll join the NHK Symphony under Jonathan Nott for concerts with both the Ligeti Concerto and Prokofiev Concerto No.1. 20 09/10 highlights will include concerts with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Santa Cecilia, Tokyo Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony.
In addition to a busy schedule of concerto performances, Shoji appears regularly as a recitalist and chamber musician alongside colleagues such as Vadim Repin, Mikhail Pletnev, Lang Lang, Itamar Golan, Yefim Bronfman and Steven Isserlis. Festival appearances have included Verbier, Schleswig-Holstein, Evian, the Estate Musicale del Garda, the Fêtes Musicales en Touraine, and the Folles Journées in Nantes and Tokyo.
Sayaka Shoji records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon. Her début CD with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic featuring works by Paganini, Chausson and Waxman was quickly followed by a live recording of her debut recital at the Auditorium de Louvre and a disc of Prokofiev and Shostakovich works (accompanied on both occasions by Itamar Golan). Sayaka’s most recent recording included the Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky concertos with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Chung.
Shoji's teachers have included Zakhar Bron, Sashko Gawriloff, Shlomo Mintz, Uto Ughi and Riccardo Brengola (for chamber music). Sayaka graduated from the Hochschuele fur Musik Köln in 2004 and has since made Europe her permanent base.
Sayaka performs on the 1729 Recamier Stradivarius – kindly loaned by Dr. Ryuzo Ueno, Honorary Chairman, Ueno Fine Chemicals Industry, Ltd.





