Violinist Daishin Kashimoto went from child prodigy to obtaining one of the most important orchestral positions by age 30. Along with his concertmaster duties, he has also made solo appearances with top orchestras around the world and in chamber ensembles with many leading artists, and he has an expanding discography. Kashimoto was born in London on March 27, 1979. Out of all the toy instruments his parents gave him, Kashimoto preferred the violin, and he began taking lessons at age three in Tokyo with Kumiko Etoh. In 1986, at the age of seven, he was the youngest student accepted to Juilliard's pre-college division at that time. While there, he gave his first solo recital and appeared with the New York Symphonic Ensemble. His further studies included work with Zakhar Bron in Lübeck and Rainer Kussmaul in Freiburg, plus a few prize-winning performances throughout the 1990s. In 2009, Kashimoto was appointed as concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, the same position once held by Kussmaul. Kashimoto has appeared as a soloist with many of the best-known orchestras around the globe, including the Vienna, Berlin, Boston, Russian State, and NHK Symphonies, and the Czech Philharmonic. He has also performed chamber music with a long and distinguished list of other instrumentalists, such as Mischa Maisky, Shlomo Mintz, and Tabea Zimmermann. Kashimoto released an album of sonatas with pianist Itamar Golan in 2002, and Brahms' Violin Concerto with Myung-Whun Chung and the Dresden Staatskapelle in 2007, both on the Sony Classical label. In 2014, Kashimoto issued a complete cycle of the Beethoven sonatas with Konstantin Lifschitz on Warner Classics. In 2020, Kashimoto collaborated with several other musicians for the album Vienne 1900, on the Alpha label.