Winner of the 2019 GRAMMY Award for Best Chamber Music/ Small Ensemble Performance, violinist Keiko Tokunaga spends most of her days touring and performing globally as a soloist and chamber musician. Keiko has performed, toured and recorded extensively with the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet from 2005 to 2019, and has been praised by the Strings Magazine for possessing a sound “with probing quality that is supple and airborne” and for her “pure, pellucid bow strokes”. She has soloed with various orchestras including the Spanish National Orchestra, Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya and Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Orchestra.

In 2021, Keiko founded an online concert series, Jukebox Concerts, in order to provide artistic outlets for musicians who lost their engagements due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The performances were made available not only to the subscribers, but also to residents of nursing homes, hospitals and assisted living facilities across the country. Later in the year, she created INTERWOVEN, a multi-cultural ensemble whose mission is to eliminate discrimination against the AAAPI (Asians, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) community by integrating the musical traditions of the East and West.

While Keiko played the Attacca Quartet, the ensemble won numerous prestigious awards including the GRAMMY Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance, First Prize of the 7th Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in 2011; the Third Prize and the Australian Broadcast Corporation Classic FM Listener’s Choice Award of the 6th Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition in 2011. The Attacca Quartet served as the Graduate String Quartet in Residence at The Juilliard School from 2011 till 2013, and as artist-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the 2014-15 season.

When she is not on the road, Keiko enjoys her career as an educator. She is currently on faculty at Fordham University. In the past, she taught at The Juilliard School Pre-College Division; the Hunter College of New York; New York University;  the Port Townsend Chamber Music Festival; and Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute.

Music is not the only medium Keiko uses to express herself; she draws a series of cartoons about her life as a violinist and as a servant to her cat on Instagram. 

Keiko plays on a J. B. Vuillaume violin from 1845, generously loaned by an anonymous donor. She also enjoys playing on a Baroque-style violin made by Antonio Mariani, circa 1669, formerly in the collection of Gabriel Schaff. Her bow was made by Nicolas Maire circa 1850.