Shunske Sato

A master of both modern and Baroque violins and a prominent conductor in historically informed performances, Shunske Sato has won recognition for his concerts and recordings of Bach, Vivaldi, and Telemann, as well as standard Classical and Romantic concerto repertoire. Born in 1984 in Tokyo, Sato started lessons on the violin at age 2, and by 4 he was a student of Chin Kim. He made his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra when he was 10, and launched his career by winning the first prize in the Young Concert Artists competition in 1997, when he was 12. Sato competed at the 17th International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig in 2010, winning the second prize and the audience prize, and he was the recipient of the Idemitsu Award and the S & R Washington Award. Sato’s education took him to the Juilliard School, where he studied with Dorothy DeLay and Maseo Kawasaki, and later in Paris, where he worked with Gérard Poulet. He earned his graduate diploma at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, where he studied Baroque violin with Mary Utiger. Sato plays Baroque violin as the concertmaster of Concerto Köln and he is the artistic director of the Netherlands Bach Society. He has performed as soloist with the Orchestra Libera Classica, the Berliner Lautten Compagney, and the Academy of Ancient Music. He has also collaborated with major symphony orchestras in standard concerto performances, appearing in Europe, and Japan, as well as with American orchestras. An accomplished chamber musician, Sato has performed with Christine Schornsheim, Hidemi Suzuki, and Richard Egarr. In addition to his Baroque violin recordings, Sato has also recorded Niccolò Paganini’s Caprices for solo violin using gut strings, and played a modern violin in Eugène Ysaÿe’s unaccompanied violin sonatas, Edvard Grieg’s sonatas for violin and piano, and works for violin and viola by Akira Nishimura. ~ Blair Sanderson