Winner of numerous competitions and awards, Yuko was honored with NHK award, and Nomura award, and won First Prizes at All-Japan National Student Competition, Toho Gakuen School of Music Concerto Competition, The Juilliard School Concerto Competition, and was a third prize winner at Citta di Cantu International Competition.

Performance at the Delaware Valley College, Doylestown, PA Performing Beethoven, Brahms and Bruch Sonatas

A native of Japan, Yuko has performed with Toho Gakuen Orchestra under Taijiro Iimori, the Westchester Chamber Symphony with Barry Charles Hoffman and Philharmonic Orchestra of Romania with Mihail Jora di Bacau. Mrs. Izuhara-Gordon performed at Tours Music Festival in France, Aspen Music Festival, Tel-Hai International Piano Master Class in Israel, Music Festival of the Hamptons in New York, and Kyoto-France Academy in Japan. An active chamber musician since an early age, Mrs. Izuhara-Gordon, performed with her brother, violinist Takashi Izuhara in Japan, USA and Europe. Deeply committed to philanthropic endeavors, Yuko organized and performed a series of solo and ensemble benefit concerts dedicated to aiding the recovery following the Great Hanshin earthquake in 1995 and Great Tohoku earthquake in 2011. In addition to fundraising efforts, since 2006 Mrs. Izuhara-Gordon has collaborated with violist Victoria Voronyansky in numerous community and school concerts, dedicated to arts advocacy and music education awareness in the Philadelphia area.

Benefit concert at Steve Tobin Studio in Quakertown, PA

Yuko Izuhara-Gordon began to study piano with her mother when she was just a toddler and continued her studies with Juilliard professor Baruch Arnon. In Japan Yuko studied with Michiko Okamoto at the Toho Gakuen School of Music.

Music is Fun! She learned to play the piano, flute, violin and conducting!

Triumphs at numerous competitions followed her early success, culminating with an award of the prestigious grant in 2002 from the Japanese Cultural Affairs Council, of which she was a sole recipient in Japan for two consecutive years. The grant fully funded Yuko's education at the Juilliard School, from which she holds BM and MM degrees, and where she worked with Joseph Kalichstein and Yoheved Kaplinsky.

Graduation from The Juilliard School

Exceptional experience working with world-class musicians

In addition to her performance career, Yuko Gordon was a teaching fellow and assistant at Juilliard School in piano performance class, and taught piano at the 92nd Street Y and the Settlement Music school.

Currently, she is the director of MUSICA VERA ACADEMY and teaches chamber music and piano courses at the University of Pennsylvania.

In recent years she also performed at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Madison Square Garden in New York City, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and France. Her performance of the viola arrangement of the first violin sonata by Bach was broadcast on the National Radio of Finland, and her solo debut with the Manhattan Chamber Symphony of Hans Sitt’s Concertpiece was broadcast on WQXR radio station in New York as part of Robert Sherman’s Young Artists Showcase.

She was also featured on the Israeli television as part of the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program, and in broadcasts on National Public Radio. A founding member of the Acacia String Quartet, Victoria was selected to participate in Isaac Stern’s Chamber Music Workshop at Carnegie Hall. The quartet won The Bärenreiter Urtext Prize in the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and the Young Artists International Competition, and performed live on WQXR in New York.

She also performed with the International Sejong Soloists when the group was featured as ensemble in residence at the Aspen Music Festival. Among her other chamber music credits are performances with The Perlman Chamber Players, an ensemble led by Itzhak Perlman, in the Mostly Mozart series at Lincoln Center, and as a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and Taos Chamber Music Festival.

Deeply involved in the field of education, Victoria designed a unique curriculum and taught an innovative course at the Juilliard School on performance and recording. Curriculum for the "Recording Project" course guided young violists, individually and as a group through the process of exploration and enhancement of their playing by using reflective listening and analysis techniques designed by Victoria, and taught by her during the course, which was made possible through Garett Albert Special Fund at The Juilliard School. In addition to this course, Victoria has given numerous presentations on topics ranging from injury prevention to physics of sound at Juilliard, which led to her first publication in the Journal of the American Viola Society. Victoria also served as a member of the violin and viola faculty at Mannes College of Music and Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance.

She continues to teach privately, and conducts long distance online courses on violin and viola performance, solfeggio, music theory, and recording. Students she has taught have gone on to major orchestras and conservatories, and current students hold principal positions in regional orchestras and are active in supporting their community by performing for charitable causes. Her other teaching credits include a fellowship with The Perlman Music Program and teaching at Les Rencontres Musicales Internationales des Graves Festival in Bordeaux, France.

She was a recipient of the Edward J. Noble Educational Fellowship at The Juilliard School, and was subsequently presented with Blanchette Rockefeller and Henry Alderman Trust Awards. Victoria studied viola with Heidi Castleman, Cynthia Phelps, and Pinchas Zuckerman, and chamber music with members of the Juilliard and American String Quartets, Felix Galimir and Isaac Stern. She holds a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School.

In addition to her own private piano studio, Julia Liu was a piano faculty member and music history faculty member for the Music Advancement Program at Juilliard, teaching fellow for the Literature and Materials Department at Juilliard, a four-year program for undergraduate students devoted to the study and practice of music theory, and an adjunct faculty member in piano and music theory departments at NYU. Her students have also gained acceptances to top universities and conservatories, including The Juilliard School.

Julia Liu has been giving private piano lessons in New York City and Long Island since 1997 and in central NJ since 2007. She is currently a member of piano faculty at Peddie School.