Maki Yoneta began studying the piano at the age six. She gained her BMus degree in March 1996 with first class honours from the Musashino College of Music in Tokyo where she was the Naoaki Fukui Memorial Scholar. <br />
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Maki then came to London and entered the Royal College of Music in September 1996 as a scholar on the postgraduate Soloist programme studying. She won the Cornelius Fisher Piano Prize in 1997, and gained her Diploma in Advanced Performance Solo/Ensemble Recitalist in July 1998. As the 1999 winner of the Hatfield Music Festival, Maki performed Grieg Piano Concerto with the Philharmonic Orchestra at the University of Hertfordshire in December 1999.<br />
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After graduating from the RCM as a soloist, Maki went to the Guildhall School Music & Drama where she studied on the Professional Accompanist Courseand gained her Master's degree in 2001. Masterclasses participation includes those given by Graham Johnson, Martin Katz, Malcolm Martineau and Roger Vignoles. Maki is a participant in the concert series at St Martin-In-The-Fields as both as a soloist (2000) and accompanist (2003). She participated in the Franz-Schubert-Institute (Austria) Summer Course 2003 Poetry and Performance of the German Lied for singer and accompanists, for which Maki was awarded a full scholarship. This enabled her to work with such people Elly Ameling, Helmut Deutsch, Keith Engen, Wolfgang Holzmair, Jorma Hynninen, Rudolf Jansen, Christoph Pregardien and Edith Wiens. She went on to play for the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition in September 2003 in which she and her singing partner reached the semi-final. Then Maki won the Birmingham Accompanist Year of the Award in November 2003. Recent activities include Christina Ludwig's Lieder Masterclass, which was part of the Park Lane Group's series at the Wigmore Hall in January 2004. This masterclass and players received a good press by the Evening Standard. <br />
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Then she moved to Scotland to stady opera as a repetiteur at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama, at where she currently works as a staff accompanist. During her study at the RSAMD, she played with a soprano for the dinner party by the Scottish First Mister in the Bute House in Edinburgh. She won the first prize with the same soprano in the Hans-Sachs Duo Competition with a soprano singer in Nuremberg, Germany in 2006. She also gained The Leonard Hancock Prize for Young Repetiteurs in the UK. <br />
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She is currently participating in a number of recitals and masterclasses in Britain, Europe and Japan.<br />
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(She is moving back to London from August 2008)