Japanese-born Fujiko Imajishi has made her home in Canada since 1968. After studies with Lorand Fenyves, Ruggiero Ricci, Franco Gulli and the Hungarian Quartet she went on to win both the Montreal and Toronto Symphony Competitions. She is concertmaster of the Esprit Orchestra and until 2009 was concertmaster of the National Ballet of Canada, and is a founding member and first violinist of the string quartet Accordes. She has enjoyed a long association with New Music Concerts with which she performed Lutosawski’s solo works for violin and orchestra, Partita and Chain 2, conducted by the composer, recordings of which were first released on CD in 1994. She also gave the Canadian première of Ligeti’s Violin Concerto in 1999. In 2002 she performed Anthèmes for violin solo in the presence of composer Pierre Boulez on the occasion of the presentation of the International Glenn Gould Prize. In 2006 Fujiko Imajishi gave the North American première of the violin concerto Vortex by Raminta Serksnyte with New Music Concerts and in 2008 the first Canadian performance of two solo violin works by Elliott Carter, which were also included on a CD to mark his hundredth birthday.
