Biography
Mai Matsumoto is a Japanese violinist based in Miami Beach, Florida, currently performing as a member of the New World Symphony. She was previously a member of Symphony in C and has held concertmaster and principal positions with the Juilliard Chamber Orchestra, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra in Germany, the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra in Japan, and the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. In addition, she has been invited to perform with the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra and the Britt Festival Orchestra and spent four summers at the Aspen Music Festival as a recipient of the New Horizons Fellowship.
As a soloist, Mai has presented recitals in New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Tokyo. She has also appeared as a soloist with the South Valley Symphony, Prometheus Symphony Orchestra, DVC Philharmonic Orchestra, and the North American Medical Orchestra. She was featured in Salon de Virtuosi’s Summer Song from Japan concert at the Consulate General of Japan in New York. A semifinalist in the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition, she received first prize at the Mondavi Center Young Artists Competition and an Honorable Mention from the National YoungArts Foundation, among other awards.
Mai’s passion for community service flourished during her time at the Juilliard School, where she was a violinist in the Para Quintet and a recipient of the Gluck Community Service Fellowship. This interdisciplinary group was dedicated to using music and dance as vehicles for community engagement. She also co-founded the YoungArts Trio, partnering with Montefiore Medical Center in New York to bring uplifting music to hospital waiting rooms. Mai performs virtual bedside concerts as part of Project Music Heals Us’s Vital Sounds Initiative and has organized concerts at Miami Cancer Institute through the New World Symphony’s BLUE Projects. Furthermore, she was a member of the “Back to Bach” Project: Kids for Classical, where she first realized the importance of making classical music more accessible through education and outreach performances.
Mai’s dedication extends beyond performing, as she shares her passion for music through teaching. She works with music education programs in Miami, and while in New York, she served as a Morse Teaching Artist Fellow at Juilliard, an Ambassador for the Opportunity Music Project, and a teaching artist at the Chamber Music Society’s Petting Zoo events. In 2023, she was a teaching artist for the Atlanta Music Project’s Summer Series.
Originally from Tokyo, Japan, Mai began playing the violin at the age of four at the Toho Gakuen School of Music for Children, studying with Ami Watanabe. After moving to the United States at age ten, she continued her studies in the Pre-College Division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with Bettina Mussumeli and Zhao Wei. Mai earned her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Naoko Tanaka and Catherine Cho.
