Winner of the top prize in the violin division of the 12th International Tchaikovsky Competition (second place, with no first place winner) in June, 2002, and at the same time, of the Special Prize for Excellence in Performance of Modern Music, awarded by the Russian Composers Association.

Grand prize winner of the 2001 Pablo Sarasate International Violin Competition, virtuoso violinist Tamaki Kawakubo is a veteran of the concert stage. She has performed with such leading orchestras as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra the San Francisco Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra.

Winner of the 1997 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Miss Kawakubo began her violin studies at the age of five in Los Angeles. She studied with Robert Lipsett at the R.D. Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles and most recently with Dorothy Delay and Masao Kawasaki at the Juilliard School of Music. ln addition to her career as soloist, she presently studies with Zakhar Bron at the Musik Hochschule in Koln, Germany.

Tamaki Kawakubo plays on the 1707 "Cathedral" Stradivarius on loan from the Mandell Collection of Southern California.