Ria Honda attends the 2024 TSM Academy courtesy of the Leslie & Peter Barton Fellowship, in memory of Ji Soo Choi.

Hometown: Tokyo, Japan

23-year old Japanese-American violinist, Ria Honda, was recently named a 2022 Rohm Music Foundation Scholarship recipient. In 2021, she was awarded the fourth prize at the 2021 Irving M. Klein International String Competition. She was named a YoungArts Winner in 2017 and 2018. Additionally, she has been featured on WFMT’s Introductions, NPR’s “From the Top,” the Young Steinway Concert Series, “Heifetz on Tour”, and the Evermay Concert Series in Washington D.C. She has performed with the Seattle Symphony, Cascade Symphony Orchestra, and the Oistrakh Symphony, among others. Recent and upcoming concerts include appearances at the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series in Chicago, The National Cherry Blossom Festival as a member of the 6821 Quintet at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and in Tokyo and Kyoto as part of the Rohm Music Foundation Concert Series. 

Ria has participated in the Meadowmount School of Music, The Heifetz Institute, Ishikawa Music Academy, Académie Musicale de Villecroze, Music Master Courses Japan, The Perlman Music Festival, and the Music Academy of the West’s String Quartet Seminar, to name a few. She recently participated in the Taipei Music Academy and Festival where she performed with Cho-Liang Lin.  She has worked in master classes and lessons with artists such as Martin Beaver, Ray Chen, Glenn Dicterow, Mihaela Martin, David Nadien, Joseph Silverstein, Pavel Vernikov, and Yo-Yo Ma. A passionate chamber musician, Ria has been a winner of numerous chamber music competitions including First Prize at the M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition, First Prize at the Enkor International Competition, and silver medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. She currently plays on a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Turin 1779, on generous loan from the Ryuji Ueno Foundation.  

Born in Tokyo, Japan, Ria received her early training with Margaret Pressley and continued her studies with Jan Sloman in Dallas and Almita and Roland Vamos at the Music Institute of Chicago’s Academy program. Through the Columbia-Juilliard Exchange, Ria received a B.A. in Economics in 2022 from Columbia University and an M.M. from the Juilliard School where she studied with Li Lin and was concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra. She is currently continuing her studies at Yale School of Music under the tutelage of Soovin Kim.