Lisa Yoshida is a violinist, composer, and educator based in Orange County, California. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology at the University of California, Irvine. Her research reimagines the role of the violinist as an autobiographical multimedia performer, integrating audio-visual technologies to expand the expressive possibilities of the violinist. Lisa was recently named the winner of the 2025 UCI Concerto Competition. She will perform Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto with the UCI Symphony in June 2025.

As a performer-composer, she has attended the Darmstadt Summer Courses’ Violin Studio, June in Buffalo, Domaine Forget Music Festival’s New Music Program, and Nief-Norf’s Composer-Performer-Improvisor Summit. Her composition, Hana No Tayori (2024) for piano, violin, and cello, received a Merit Award for the Tribeca New Music 2025 Young Composer Competition.

She is actively private teaching in Irvine, and her students have won auditions into local youth orchestras, including the IUSD Honors Orchestras and All-Southern Orchestras. Lisa served as the 1st violin coach at Wildwood Music Institute in San Bernardino, CA, a youth summer orchestra camp, in 2019 and 2022.

In June 2022, she served as the tour coordinator for violinist Midori’s NPO Music Sharing - International Community Engagement Tour; visiting 17 facilities in seven prefectures for two weeks in Japan. The organization brings live classical music to populations who have little or no access to traditional concert halls. In 2023 and 2024, she spent the summer at Pacific Music Festival to work as their Assistant Orchestra Manager.

A graduate of California State University Long Beach with a Master of Music in Violin Performance, she studied under Moni Simeonov and was the Strings Graduate Student Assistant and a member of the CSULB University String Quartet. Lisa has a Bachelor of Music degree in Violin Performance and a French minor from Chapman University, where she studied with Prof. William Fitzpatrick. 

Outside of music, she enjoys rock climbing and watching baseball!

Publication:

“The Audio-Visual Experience in Natacha Diels's Nightmare for JACK” on ProQuest