Yayoi Toda began with violin lessons at the age of four and quickly showed her talents as she took first place in the primary school division of the 33rd Japan Music Competition for Students in 1979. Her competitive successes continued and in 1985, she won first place in the 54th Japan Music Competition. She studied at Tokyo's Toho Gakuen High School and went to Europe for further studies at Amsterdam's Sweelinck Music Academy. She has worked with Toshiya Eto, Herman Krebbers, Charles-André Linale and Dorothy Delay and is a recipient of the prestigious Idemitsu Music Award. In 1993 she came to the attention of the classical music world when she won first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition.

To date, her busy performance schedule has included engagements with London Philharmonic Orchestra, the New York Chamber Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic, Prague Chamber Orchestra, Bonn Beethovenhalle Orchestra, The Hague Residentie Orchestra, Radio Chamber Orchestra (Holland), Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Noord-Nederlands Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen as well as many of Japan's own major orchestras.

She has performed with artists including Seiji Ozawa, Yuri Simonov, Jean Fournet, Gary Bertini, Kenichiro Kobayashi, Martha Argerich, Stanislav Bunin, Peter Eötvös, Shlomo Mintz, Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Frank Braley, Abdel Rahman El Bacha and Alexander Schneider.

In 1996, Yayoi Toda received the Delay Scholarship to study for one year at the Juilliard School, and a year later made her New York debut. The same year saw her performance at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam of the violin concerto dedicated to her by Dutch composer Tristan Keuris, Violin Concerto No 2. She has been invited yearly to the Fukushima International Music Festival.

Yayoi Toda has made recordings such as “Enesco, J.S. Bach” and “The Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach” for the Ongaku-no-Tomo record label, “Six Sonatas for Violin Solo of Ysaye” in 2004, the precious favorite violin pieces “Reve d'enfant” in 2006 for EXTON.

She performs on the “Pietro Guarneri (1740)” generously provided by Ueno Fine Chemicals Industry, Ltd.