Miyako Machida was born in Japan and studied at the Toho Gakuen College of Music in Tokyo. After finishing her degree she came to London to study privately with Jeremy Menuhin and a year later she entered the Royal Northern College of Music where she studied with Helen Krizos and Benjamin Frith. She has completed a postgraduate diploma and a Professional Performance Diploma and continued her studies for two years with Martin Roscoe whilst she was a Junior Fellow in Accompaniment. She is currently working as a Staff Pianist and also teaching at the Junior RNCM.
Miyako won the first prize in the Ribble Valley International Piano Week Competition in 1998. Whilst at the RNCM she was awarded the Ryszard Bakst Memorial Award for Playing Chopin, the William Humphreys Dayas Prize, the Julius Scholarship, the Alan Rawsthorne Award, Dora Gilson Scholarship, the RJ Forbes Award for Accompaniment Repetiteur Work and bursary scholarships. She received a scholarship to attend IMS Prussia Cove in 1998.
She has participated in numerous masterclasses with musicians such as Gyorgy Sebok, Dmitri Bashkirov, Stephen Kovacevich, Charles Rosen, Arnold Cohen, Anne Queffelec, Alexander Melnikov, and Jos van Immerseel(fortepiano), and as a chamber musician, with Mstislav Rostropovich, Ralph Kirshbaum, and Ivry Gitlis.
Miyako has given several concerts in Europe. As a concerto soloist, she has performed Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto with Baden-Badener Philharmonie and Die Jungen Fürther Streichhölzer in Germany, Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto with the Manchester Beethoven Society, Beethoven's Fourth Concerto with the RNCM Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Hansjorg Schellenberger, the former principal oboe player in the Berlin Philharmonie. During the Henze Festival at the RNCM, she performed the Concertino with RNCM Wind and Percussion Ensemble and subsequently at the Royal Festival Hall in London.
She has been invited to Rydale Festival, Aboyne and Deeside Festival, Ribble Valley International Piano Week, Aberystwyth Music Fest, Adelaiede Cello Festival, and has also appeared in St.Martin-in-the-Fields, Craxton Studio, and Australian House in London, Bridgewater Hall in Manchetser, Holywell Music Hall in Oxford, Pump Room in Bath, Lotherton Hall in Leeds, Manchester Mid-Day Concert, North Fylde Music Society, and Chester Music Society.
