The Japanese-born pianist Naoko Sonoda is a prize-winner of several international piano and chamber music competitions, including those held in Argento and Trieste (Italy), as well as the Łódź Competition (Poland).

Ms Sonoda studied with Yoko Okumura, Seiko Ezawa and Mikhail Voskresensky at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, before studying at the Berlin University of the Arts with Rainer Becker. She also studied chamber music with Tabea Zimmermann, Markus Nyikos and Natalia Gutman. She has taken masterclasses with Hans Leygraf, Ferenc Rados, Klaus Hellwig, Pascal Devoyon and Jacques Rouvier. After graduating, she was engaged by the Berlin University of the Arts, the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin and the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar as a collaborative pianist.

Solo and chamber music concert invitations have taken Naoko Sonoda throughout Europe, Asia, the US and South America and to festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Meckle-Vorpommern Festival and Verbier Festival. Her chamber music partners include Santiago Cañón Valencia, Danjulo Ishizaka, Jens-Peter Maintz, and Andrei Ionita. She has performed with such renowned orchestras as the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and has been heard in world-class venues, most notably the Berlin Philharmonie and Konzerthaus, Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall in St Petersburg, Teatro Mayor in Bogota, Wigmore Hall in London, and Carnegie Hall in New York.

Ms. Sonoda is in high demand as a collaborative pianist, and has received prizes as the best collaborative pianist at the International Music Competition in Markneukirchen (2013, 2019), the Lutosławski International Cello Competition in Warsaw (2015, 2018), and the 15th International Tchaikovsky Competition (2015, 2019). Her performances are regularly broadcast on international radio and TV, including Kulturradio RBB, ZDF and BR in Germany, NPO Radio 4 in the Netherlands, Radio Romania, NHK-FM in Japan and the BBC in the UK.