Besides being the new Music Director/Conductor of the New Britain Symphony Orchestra, Toshiyuki Shimada is Music Director and Conductor of both the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes. He was Music Director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra from 2005 to 2019, and is Music Director Laureate of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, where he served from 1986 to 2006. Prior to his Portland engagement, he was Associate Conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra for 6 years. Since 1998, he has also served as Principal Conductor of the Vienna Modern Masters record label in Austria.
He has collaborated with distinguished artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Andre Watts, Peter Serkin, Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Idil Biret, Peter Frankl, János Starker, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Cho-Liang Lin, Sir James Galway, David Shifrin, Evelyn Glennie, and Barry Tuckwell. In the Pops field, he has performed with Doc Severinsen, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Marvin Hamlisch.
Maestro Shimada has had the good fortune to study with many distinguished conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Herbert Blomstedt, Hans Swarovsky and Michael Tilson Thomas. He was a finalist in the 1979 Herbert von Karajan conducting competition in Berlin and a Fellow Conductor in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute in 1983. In addition, he was named Ariel Musician of the Year in 2003 by Ariel Records, and received the ASCAP award in 1989. He graduated from California State University, Northridge and attended the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Vienna, Austria.
Maestro Shimada continues close association with Turkish orchestras, and this season he will be guest conducting the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, his fifth such collaboration. He will also continue his association with the Lindenbaum Festival in South Korea, supporting its mission to bring peace in the world through great music, and to help promote peace in the Korean Peninsula.
