Megumi Hashiba

Megumi Hashiba was born in Japan and began to play the piano at the age of four. Since her youth she has been taking lessons from Mitsuko Uchida, whose influence was decisive in her studies at the Toho-Gakuen Music Conservatory in Tokyo. In 1985, while still a student she won First Prize and the Masuzawa Special Prize at the renowned national Nihon Music Competition in Japan. In 1987 she travelled to Germany in order to study under Prof. Pavel Gililov at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne and graduated after passing her concert examination in 1993.

She has won prizes at international competitions such as the Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, the Tomassoni Music Competition in Cologne and the Chopin Piano Competition in Cologne.

Since the end of her music studies, Megumi Hashiba is giving concerts as a soloist and a chamber musician and is a guest at international festivals, such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Piano Festival Ruhr, the Lionel Tertis International Viola Festival, the Euriade, the Kammermusikfest Kloster Kamp as well as the Rencontres Musicales Internationales d’Enghien.

As a sought after chamber musician she is regularly playing at the WDR Chamber Music Concerts, the International Summer Academy for Chamber Music Niedersachsen and at various masterclasses. She has recorded CDs with viola players Rainer Moog at GENUIN Classics and Hartmut Lindemann at TACET as well as with the cellist Tray Lee at EMI/Asia. 

Since 1994, Megumi Hashiba has been teaching instrumental accompaniment and chamber music at the Cologne University of Music and has been a regular accompanist at Kronberg Academy since 2014, where she received decisive musical impulses from renowned artists such as Christoph Eschenbach, Daniel Barenboim, Sir András Schiff and Gidon Kremer.