Shizuyo Oka

Shizuyo Oka studied clarinet with Michel Arrignon and bass clarinet with Jean-Noel Crocq at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, graduating with three first prizes for clarinet, bass clarinet and chamber music. In 2000-2001, she was a member of the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma.

She has been a member of Ensemble Recherche since 1998. Her solo activities have included solo concerts with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre philharmonique du Luxembourg, the Spanish Radiotelevision Orchestra, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, among others. Solo pieces dedicated to her by Georg Kurtag, Mark Andre, Alberto Posadas, and others.

With Ensemble Recherche, she has taught at several universities (Salzburg, Essen, Bremen, Rostock, Lugano, Weimar, etc.) and given masterclasses in Japan, Mexico, Moscow, Ukraine, China, South America, the USA, etc. She has been a lecturer at the Ensemble Academy Freiburg since 2003 and she also worked as lecturer at the Darmstadt Summer Course in 2023.