Kaori Yamagami
4th Prize
photo © Dominique Allié
Kaori Yamagami
with the Orchestre de Paris
Théâtre du Chatelet
Final round, 19 November 2005
Kaori Yamagami was born in 1982 in Zushi-Shi, Japan and began her study of the ‘cello at the age of three with Gregory Goldberg. Her early teachers were Daniel Domb, Vladimir Orlov, and Mihai Telel. In 1992, 1993, and 1994, she gained top honours at the Canadian National Music Competition. From 1995 to 2001, she was a student of Orlando Cole at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. She then studied with Paul Katz at the New England Conservatory in Boston for two years.
Among her many prizes, she received the award for most promising performer in the 1997 Rostropovich International ‘Cello Competition and first place in the CBC Young Performer’s Competition in 2001. The following year she participated in the Boris Permagenschikow masterclasses at the Kronberg Academy in Germany. At the age of twenty-one, she won first place in the Canada Council Instrument Bank Loan Competition, an accomplishment that entitles her to the use of the Bonjour Stradivarius ‘cello for three years as well as a renewed loan of a bow by Shaw Adam. In 2004, she won the Ingrid zu Solms prize at the Kronberg masterclasses and was accepted into Frans Helmerson’s class at the Musikhochschule in Berlin, Germany.
