Violinist Is in Tune With Her Interests

She’s a woman with one name but multiple lives.

Midori’s fame as a violinist reveals only part of her story. In addition to a steady schedule of concert engagements, including a stint playing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra last week, she is heavily involved with the nonprofit organization she founded to enhance music education in New York City public schools.

She also plans to add violin teaching to her schedule next fall, joining the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. And having recently earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University--not in music, but psychology--she’s working on a master’s in the same field, which she expects to complete in 2002. She doesn’t rule out the possibility of starting work on another degree after that.

“There are many different fields that interest me,” she says between sips of tea at her Upper West Side Manhattan apartment. “Architecture, communications, sociology. I’m not so much into pure science, like chemistry--oooh! But I love, love, love school. It has given me such a grounding force.”

Evidence of that grounding comes through in the articulate way she talks about herself. When she says, “I think I’m well-centered,” there’s no doubt how focused Midori is, how comfortable she is with who she is and the choices she has made.

“The reason I got interested in psychology initially is that I’m fascinated by how the mind works,” she says. “And it’s so practical. I can apply it to so many parts of my life. Psychology is a way to explain what’s already there, what you already do anyway. I’m interested in finding out how much of what we do is the work of nature and of how much of nurture.”

Midori herself might be called a well-nurtured force of nature.

Born Goto Mi Dori in Osaka, Japan, she received her first violin lessons from her mother and gave her first public concert at 6. Five years later, she made her New York Philharmonic debut.

At 14, she hit the front page of the New York Times, having caused a sensation during another appearance with the philharmonic. In the middle of playing Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade,” with the composer conducting and watching her incredulously, she broke a string on her violin, borrowed the concertmaster’s fiddle, broke another string and borrowed another fiddle--never missing a note of the music and maintaining perfect composure throughout the performance.

In short order, she debuted on the world’s major concert stages and on television (including a special taped at the White House during the Reagan era). Midori became the most celebrated prodigy in years, hailed not only for the jaw-dropping technical wizardry--precise pitch, supple fingering, warm tone--but the mature expressiveness behind her playing.

Despite many predictions that she wouldn’t make a successful transition to adult artist, Midori has had naysayers changing their tune. At 29, she remains a major classical music star.

Sitting in a dining nook next to the kitchen of her flat, which she shares with a female roommate and two affectionate dogs, Midori couldn’t look more un-starlike. No makeup. Hair uncoiffed, held back by a simple headband. Barefoot. A long, plain skirt.

But behind the disarming appearance, something about the eyes--the steadiness and intensity of the gaze--reflects the seriousness and sincerity that separates Midori from the merely talented. Her artistic gifts have only ripened with time. And whatever scars she may carry from the prodigy years, growing up largely under public scrutiny, she hides well.

“When you are 11, 12, 13, you are trying to gain a sense of identity,” Midori says. “But when you’re a prodigy, you’re constantly being told what your identity is, and you are put in a position of being someone who can do no wrong. At the same time, you are told that being a prodigy is not so positive.”

‘I Had a Very Balanced Environment,’ She Says

While some musical prodigies, like some child movie stars, have ended up estranged from their families, Midori enjoys good relationships with her mother, stepfather and 13-year-old stepbrother (also a violinist). They live in the same building.

The violinist learned early on that “there is so much disparity between what is real and the pedestal you are put on as a child performer.” But she was not allowed to stay on that perch.

“I was very lucky,” Midori says. “I had a very balanced environment. I was not excused from school or from the basic responsibilities of being a child. I wasn’t chauffeured to school in limousines.”

Looking back now on her early years, Midori expresses neither bitterness nor regret.

“As my brother says, ‘Without pain there is no pleasure, and without pleasure there is no pain.’ Without both sides you don’t become a balanced being; you can’t really be who you are right now without having those experiences.”

Midori, who says it’s impossible to “filter out everything that can potentially harm you,” sums up her childhood experience matter-of-factly.

“For me, being a prodigy was good at times, and bad at times. But it all becomes very neutral.”

What gives Midori pause today is not so much her prodigy days, but the effect her talent had, and still has, on her family.

“There were many situations they had to go through, not on my account, but on my career’s account,” she says. “Sometimes, I feel guilty about that. People try to get to me through my mother; that can’t be easy for her. And people keep asking my brother, ‘What’s it like to be Midori’s brother?’ He doesn’t like being called ‘Midori’s brother.’ It’s not his fault, but it’s not my fault, either.”

The violinist says that strong bonds have kept her family close.

“I think of family as a place where you can really be yourself,” she adds, “where you can be comfortable talking about things without being politically correct.”

Midori has never worried much about being musically correct. She stopped taking violin lessons at the Juilliard School of Music with celebrated teacher Dorothy DeLay after five years, when she was only 15.

“I liked what I learned,” Midori says, “and I think I gained a lot. But it was right that I left at that time. It was time to take what I had learned and apply it in the world.”

Midori essentially took charge of her own life and career. Although she had a major-label recording contract, she would have no part of the high-powered marketing machinery that usually pushes new stars along. “It was clear from the beginning that I was going to put them in their place,” she says.

As a result, the number of concerts and recording sessions remained sensible, manageable. Midori made artistic decisions based on what she felt was best for her; that self-confidence could be heard in performances and on disc.

Further evidence of her independence and maturity came when the violinist was barely out of her teens. In 1992, she founded a nonprofit organization, Midori and Friends, to bring concerts, instrument lessons and music classes to New York public schools, helping to enhance the limited music-education opportunities there.

Initially, Midori did all the paperwork and contacts with schools; today, there is a small staff and a budget of more than $500,000. About two dozen schools, and tens of thousands of students, have benefited from the enterprise.

Driving Midori to create the foundation was a philosophy that helps to define her as an artist and a woman.

“I wanted to find ways in which I could be a member of the community at large, not just the music community,” she says, “to be in a real sense global. I don’t believe in compartmentalizing. There are so many wonderful kinds of music. We don’t just take classical music into the schools. We have a Latino band and an African music ensemble. I don’t play nonclassical music myself, but as an organization we are interested in different cultures and the impact music can have on the whole child in a lifelong sense.”

Seeking to Reach All Levels of Community

For Midori, who is used to playing for adoring, knowledgeable, standing-room-only crowds in grand halls, the prospect of facing a few hundred music-drenched kids in an inner city junior high school is energizing.

“When I look at their eyes I can see their attitudes about classical music changing,” she says. “And at the end of the year, when all the children in the instrument instruction program get up and perform for their parents, it’s really moving. I feel the excitement from everyone in the community.”

Midori also feels the difficulty of reaching all levels of that community.

“It’s not just the kids who have not had exposure to music in schools,” she says. “The parents of the kids we work with are from a generation that didn’t have arts education. The challenge is to work with parents and teachers and get them both to advocate the arts.”

Although the activities provided by Midori and Friends do not cost the school system anything, the violinist hopes to extract a price in the end. “We make it clear that we expect them to hire full-time music teachers down the line,” she says.

Just as she doesn’t believe in compartmentalizing music, Midori doesn’t like being compartmentalized herself.

“I consider myself an Asian American--without the hyphen,” she says. “Those are two very broad terms. These days, your identity is not purely your ethnicity or cultural background. I identify myself as a musician; that’s a culture. I’m part of the almost-30 group; that’s a culture. I’m bilingual; that’s a culture. I’m a student, and there’s a whole culture that comes along with that.

“What does it mean to be an American? There is no ‘unique’ American culture. It is really such a wonderful combination. It’s not a melting pot in my mind, because in a melting pot everything melts and the differences are lost. I am very much for diversity.”

Midori, who says she had prejudices about many cultures when she was younger, seems to thrive on exposure to different ideas, beliefs, artistic expressions.

She mixes jazz and movie soundtracks with her classical music listening. Although limited to school books right now, she has wide interests in reading--her West Highland terrier, Willa, is named for favorite author Willa Cather. (Her longhaired dachshund, Franzie, is named for Franz Joseph Haydn.)

What may be most surprising about Midori is her relationship with the violin.

“People assume that I practice every day, 365 days a year,” she says. “But I don’t have those rituals.”

When she does address music, though, Midori is intently focused and inquisitive.

“I am exploring and experimenting with my own self,” she says, “and that comes out in the music. I’m facing up to myself as I play. That’s very challenging.”