By Khalida Sarwari
Ask Alex Shiozaki at what age he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life playing music and he doesn’t so much as even pause. His answer–“18”–is offered with confidence and followed by that faraway look people often get when they’re about to take a stroll down memory lane.
“Around the springtime of my senior year, I guess I was confronted with kind of the pending presence of college and knowing I wouldn’t have to take lessons every week,” said Shiozaki, now 29. “There wasn’t a huge reason to continue working so hard at it. So when I was faced with having to cut back on that to focus on something else, I think that’s the point I realized I don’t want to do less of it; I want to do more of it, and I want to keep getting better.”
That he most definitely did. Shiozaki went on to graduate from Saratoga High and earn a bachelor’s degree in music from Harvard University, followed by a masters and a doctorate from the Juilliard School. The violinist has performed at Carnegie Hall more times than he can keep track of–“probably a half dozen,” he guesses–and in March, joined the New York City-based Momenta Quartet. Not surprisingly, he is the group’s youngest member.
It’s not so much the venues that fazes Shiozaki, but the people he has collaborated with. Already in his young career, he’s performed with the likes of Samuel Rhodes, a retired member of the Juilliard String Quartet, of whom he said, “To play with someone like him who has given so much to chamber music and maybe not in the most prestigious of venues, that for me is kind of a more incredible experience.”
He rattles off other influences, too, artists who are easily “Googlable”: Daniel Phillips, Ransom Wilson, Tara Helen O’Conner and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
He cites violinist Sarah Chang, San Francisco Symphony conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the Emerson String Quartet as early influences in his life.
“It’s the people,” he said, “and then the venue is a bonus.”
Shiozaki has played the violin for so long, he said he doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t play it. He started playing at the age of 3 when his parents enrolled him in classes, but he didn’t take to the instrument until he was 14.
“That’s the point I started doing it for myself and not for them,” he said.
Eleven years after that fateful decision in his senior year of high school, Shiozaki was back in town from New York City, where he’s lived for the past seven years, for a short trip to visit family and friends and squeeze in a getaway to Yosemite with his wife, Nana Shi, a pianist who teaches at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Their love of music aside, the two also share a burgeoning interest in photography.
Shiozaki also made some time for his old music teacher, Michael Boitz, who now chairs the performing arts department at Saratoga High.
“Alex Shiozaki is one of the most remarkable musicians–and just overall gracious and caring [people]– to graduate from Saratoga High School in a generation,” said Boitz, citing Shiozaki’s role in helping to get the McAfee Center built, despite graduating before he ever had a chance to perform there as a student.
Shiozaki recalled attending the farmers market every Saturday, which at the time was held in the Saratoga High parking lot, to raise awareness about raising funds to build the center and to perform with other members of the orchestra for donations.
“I think there’s such a sense of community here that I wasn’t thinking that we’re going to build this thing that I’m not going to play in,” Shiozaki said. “It’s something I knew we needed, and I wanted to do something to help.”
In his spare time, Shiozaki likes to stay up to date on technology trends, politics and current events and listen to podcasts. He also does some freelance performing and teaching privately as well as at Juilliard, where he teaches in the school’s music advancement program. Every spring for the past five years, he has returned to the Bay Area to perform as part of a weeklong concert series in educational outreach with Chamber Music by the Bay, a string quartet that was started by fellow Saratoga High alum Jessica Chang. The quartet focuses on creating programs for schools, libraries and community centers and presenting those programs all in the course of a week.
“It’s basically to bring chamber music into public schools, to communities that may not have experience with it,” Shiozaki said. “For musicians, chamber music is our bread and butter, [it] is what we want to do. But people might be more aware of big orchestras or soloists, so we basically just get together to bring good music to these places.”
For more information about Chamber Music by the Bay, visitchambermusicbythebay.com.
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