Shoji was born in Tokyo into an artistic family (her mother is a painter; her grandmother, a poet) and spent her early childhood in Siena, Italy. When she was 5 years old her family moved back to Japan, where she started studying the violin. From 1995 until 2000, she studied at the
Accademia Musicale Chigiana under
Uto Ughi and
Riccardo Brengola. At the age of 13, she went to Germany for a year to study with
Saschko Gawriloff. In 1998, she moved to Germany to study at
Hochschule für Musik Köln under
Zakhar Bron and graduated in 2004. She then continued her study with Gawriloff and also took masterclasses of
Shlomo Mintz. In 1997, she made her debut at
Lucerne Festival and
Musikverein in Vienna with
Rudolf Baumgartner. Two years later, she took the First Prize at the 1999 Paganini Competition.
Zubin Mehta has been her strong supporter. When Shoji auditioned for him in 2000, he immediately changed his schedule in order to make her first recording with the
Israel Philharmonic possible in the following month, then invited her to perform with
Bavarian State Opera and
Los Angeles Philharmonic. Since then many prominent orchestras have invited Shoji, including
Berlin Philharmonic,
London Symphony Orchestra,
Philharmonia Orchestra,
New York Philharmonic,
San Francisco Symphony,
Baltimore Symphony,
St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra,
Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and
WDR Symphony Orchestra under the baton of
Lorin Maazel,
Sir Colin Davis,
Wolfgang Sawallisch,
Esa-Pekka Salonen,
Kurt Masur,
Mariss Jansons,
Yuri Temirkanov,
Valery Gergiev,
Myung-whun Chung and
Semyon Bychkov. Shoji records with
Deutsche Grammophon. Until 2009 she used the
1715 Joachim Stradivarius on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation; today she plays the 1729 Recamier Stradivarius on loan from Ryuzo Ueno, Honorary Chairman, Ueno Fine Chemicals Industry, Ltd. == Discography ==