She made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11 as a surprise guest soloist at the New Year's Eve Gala in 1982.

In 1986 her performance at the Tanglewood Music Festival with Leonard Bernstein conducting his own composition made the front-page headlines in The New York Times.

When she was 21, she established her foundation Midori and Friends to bring music education to young people in underserved communities in New York City and Japan, which has evolved into four distinct organizations with worldwide impact.

[3][6][12] Midori gave her first public performance at the age of six, playing one of the 24 Caprices of Paganini in her native Osaka.

In the same year, she made her concert debut with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, a conductor with whom she would later record on the Sony Classical label.

The next day's The New York Times front page carried the headline, "Girl, 14, Conquers Tanglewood with 3 Violins".

[3][7] In October 1989, she celebrated her 18th birthday with her Carnegie Hall orchestral debut, playing Bartok's Violin Concerto No.

[19] In 2001, with the money Midori received from winning the Avery Fisher Prize, she established the Partners in Performance program focusing on classical music organizations in smaller communities.

[16] In 2004, Midori was named a professor at University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music where she is holder of the Jascha Heifetz Chair.

She became a full-time resident of Los Angeles in 2006 after a period of bicoastal commuting and was promoted to the chair of the Strings Department in 2007.

[19] In 2012 she was named distinguished professor at USC, elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in music by Yale University.

[21] Midori joined the violin faculty of Philadelphia's Curtis Institute in the 2018–2019 academic year and remains on the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music's violin faculty as a Judge Widney Professor of Music.

In 2012, she received the prestigious Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum in Davos for "20-year devotion to community engagement work worldwide".