Toshiyuki Shimada enters his third year as Music Director for the Yale Symphony Orchestra. Maestro Shimada joined the YSO in 2005 after a twenty-year tenure with the Portland Symphony Orchestra in Portland, Maine, where he currently serves as Music Director Laureate. He is also Music Director and Chief Creative Officer of the Trinity Music Partners, LLC, in New York, which holds the worldwide rights to the Vatican Library Music Collection, and he is Principal Conductor of the Vienna Modern Masters, in Vienna, Austria. Prior to Portland, he was Associate Conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra for six years beginning in 1981. In addition to these activities, he was Music Director of the Nassau Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of the Cambiata Soloists, a contemporary music ensemble in Houston, Music Director of the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra at Rice University, and Music Director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra in Los Angeles from 1978-81.

He has also guest conducted Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, the San Jose Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops Orchestra, Pacific Symphony Orchestra, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and many other US and Canadian orchestras. Maestro Shimada was fortunate to study with many distinguished conductors of the past and the present such as Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Herbert Blomstedt, Hans Swarovsky, Sergiu Comissiona, David Whitwell and Michael Tilson Thomas.

He was a finalist in the 1979 Herbert von Karajan conducting competition in Berlin, and a Fellow Conductor in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, in 1983.

He has received many awards and honors such as Ariel Musician of the Year from the Ariel Records, ASCAP award, Portland Fire Department's Merit Award, the Maine Publicity Bureau Cultural Award, the Italian Heritage Society Cultural Award, Toshiyuki Shimada Day in Houston, TX, etc.

Maestro Shimada records with the Vienna Modern Masters label, and with the Moravian Philharmonic, and currently he has twelve Compact Discs: VMM 3043, 3044, 3047, 3048, 3049, 3050, 3052, 3053, 3057, 4001, 4002 and 4004. Two more Compact Discs will be released in the 2004-05 season. He also records with the Capstone Records: CPS-8731 , the Querstand-VKJK (Germany) and the Albany Records: Troy646. In spring of 2005, he will begin a series of recording projects for the Trinity Music Partners, collaborating with Prague Chamber Orchestra and Prague Chamber Choir.