Through brilliant performances and numerous recordings, Yoshiko Okada is earning a distinguished place among today's most accomplished young pianists. Her frequent worldwide tours, the most recent with the Warsaw Chamber Orchestra, have been punctuated by her recording four Mozart Concerti with that orchestra under Marek Sewen.

Hailed as "a Mozart whiz" by the Toronto Star, Ms. Okada's Mozart recordings have sold more than 50,000 copies in her native Japan, distinguishing her as one of today's top Mozart interpreters. Ongaku No Tomo, the leading classical music magazine in Japan, said that "her unique sensitivity transcends timeher technique shines brilliantly," while Musica Nova of Tokyo has proclaimed Ms. Okada "truly a pianist of rare promise." The New York Times praised her as a "cultivated player with clean, transparent sound."

After intensive studies in her native Japan, Yoshiko Okada moved to Paris for advanced piano studies. At sixteen, she became immersed in the cultural life of the French capital where she continued to perfect her artistry and mastery of the French language. She worked with the eminent keyboard experts Yvonne Loriod and Anne Queffelec and while attending the Paris Ecole Normale, her concert career was launched. Further studies took Ms. Okada to London where she worked with Maria Curcio, and to Geneva where her teacher was Nikita Magaloff.

Ms. Okada has three times played to sold-out audiences in Carnegie Hall, and most recently did likewise at her April 1995 recital at the Merkin Concert Hall in New York. She is married to the eminent Polish flutist, Gregory Cimoszko.