By ASHLEY WEGNER

Midori's artistry entrances audience

When the Japan-born violinist performs live, she seems to transport the listener to a special musical oasis where she generously imparts the ideas she has garnered during her nearly 30 years as a concert violinist.

As a listener you hardly ever wonder if she's going to hit the glissandi, the double stops, the jaunts up and down the fingerboard or the maddening octaves. What you're holding your breath for is what she is going to do next - how she is going to express that next musical phrase. And her interpretations aren't surface-level opinions about notes on a page. Rather, they are the result of a well-research, highly inspired, experienced artistic vision drawn from her career as a violinist, educator and humanitarian.....

[In the Sibelius violin concerto, performed with the Omaha Symphony] Midori asserted herself as the soloist immediately with a ferocious introduction of the theme, shortly followed by a dominating, well-calculated cadenza. The lyrical second movement gave the audience an opportunity to hear the breadth of Midori's remarkable instrument, and the third movement finished the concerto with a technical obstacle course full of nearly every virtuosic feat imaginable, including some tricky double-stopped sixths. To put it plainly, this is the kind of movement that separates the girls from the women.