Wakana Ono

Wakana Ono was born in Tokyo, and started playing the violin aged 3, before switching to the viola at 15. In 2011 she won first prize in the International Johannes Brahms Competition in Pörtschach, Austria. She studied under Prof. Walter Küssner at Berlin’s Hanns Eisler Academy of Music. From 2015 to 2017 she was a scholarship-holder of the Berliner Philharmoniker Orchestral Academy, and is a former pupil of Amihai Grosz and Naoko Shimizu. She performs as a soloist in concert with the Tokyo Symphony Chamber Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic and the Hyogo PAC Orchestra. In October 2017 she premiered Toshio Hosokawa’s Ibuki for solo viola at Tokyo’s Opera City Concert Hall. She has been a member of the Bamberg Symphony since April 2018.