A Japanese national born in London in 1979, Daishin Kashimoto began studying violin in Tokyo at the age of three. He moved to New York and was accepted at the age of 7 by the pre-college division of The Juilliard School as its youngest student and received the Edward John Noble Foundation Scholarship. He then moved to Lübeck, Germany to study with Prof. Zakhar Bron. at the Luebeck Musikhochschule. He continued his studies with Prof. Rainer Kussmaul, former concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany, from which he graduated in 2005.
Daishin gave his first recital in 1988, and in the same year he made his first appearance as a soloist with the New York Symphonic Ensemble in New York. Since then, he has given recitals and solo appearances in major cities of USA, the Far East and in many European countries. He has performed with many internationally renowned orchestras, including the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Radio Symphony Orchestras of Cologne, Frankfurt and Moscow, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Czech Philharmonic, Bamberger Symphoniker, Vienna and Berlin Symphony Orchestras, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony, under the baton of such great conductors as Mariss Jansons, Semyon Bychkov, Michel Plasson, Vladimir Fedosseyev, Hugh Wolff, Evgeny Svetlanov, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Marek Janowski, Heinz Holliger, Seiji Ozawa, Lorin Maazel, Heinrich Schiff, Charles Dutoit, Jiri Kout, Myung-Whun Chung, Yury Temirkanov.
Daishin Kashimoto has appeared with several of the world’s great orchestras such as the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the Russian National Orchestra (Mikhail Pletnev), the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, Sinfonieorchester des Bayrischen Rundfunk, the Tokyo Philharmonic with Daniel Harding, the Berliner Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester with Marek Janowski …. He recorded the Brahms concerto with the Staatskapelle Dresden and Myung-Whun Chung for Sony Classical in 2007. Since 2009, he is 1st concertmaster of The Berliner Philharmoniker.
Being an outstanding and passionate performer of chamber music, Daishin is regulalry performing with such artists as Yuri Bashmet, Konstantin Lifshitz, Myung-Whun Chung, Itamar Golan, Claudio Bohórquez, Yefim Bronfman, Shlomo Mintz, Tabea Zimmermann, Paul Meyer, Antoine Tamestit, Jian Wang, Eric Le Sage, Misha Maisky, Jing Zhao, and many others.
Daishin is the first prize winner of such renowned competitions as the 6th Menuhin International Junior Violin Competition in England in 1993, the International Competition for Violinists Cologne 1994, and, in 1996, as the youngest winner in history of both the International Fritz Kreisler Violin Competition in Vienna and the Marguerite Long – Jacques Thibaud International Competition for Piano and Violin in Paris. In 1994, Daishin was awarded the Steigenberger Prize and the Davidoff Prize, as well as the Brahms Prize in 1999 in Germany.
In 1999 Daishin Kashimoto signed a worldwide recording contract with Sony Classical and has released sonata CDs with Itamar Golan and the Brahms concerto CD with the Dresdner Staatskapelle and Myung-Whun Chung.