Chihiro Larissa is an award-winning musician, historian, writing instructor, interpreter and translator, and ballet dancer. She loves all things ballet, mythology, and languages.

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Born in Japan and raised in the U.S., Chihiro started piano at age 4 with her mother, Akiko Tsukamoto, and studied with faculty at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School and The Juilliard School. The winner of numerous competitions, Chihiro was selected to perform at the Haydn Hall of Esterházy Palace in Austria, the Béla Bartók Conservatory in Hungary, the Schumann House in Germany, and Jordan Hall in Boston, among others.

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Chihiro has a B.A. in Political Science from Columbia University. A staunch supporter of human rights, Chihiro was a long-time volunteer translator for Humanium, a children's rights NGO founded in Geneva, Switzerland. She has worked for the Technologies of Peace nuclear disarmament conference at the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs and has interned for the National Institute of Science & Technology Policy in Japan. In 2017, Chihiro received an M.A. in Medieval Icelandic Studies from the University of Iceland and was awarded a $25,000 Leifur Eiríksson Fellowship to reconstruct Viking Age music.

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Chihiro received a Ph.D. from Yale University, where she won the Janice Carlisle Prize for Excellence in Teaching. She wrote her dissertation on how music was used for therapeutic purposes in Ancient Greece, and in the Byzantine, Abbasid, and Ottoman empires. She hopes to apply her research in clinical settings and was a volunteer harpist at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. 

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A lifelong bunhead, Chihiro studied ballet at Steps on Broadway, Boston Ballet, and Barnard College; percussion at the Manhattan School of Music; and has been a violinist in many orchestras. Chihiro can read in 20 languages but can't stand centipedes.