Naohisa Furusawa has been a member of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) double bass section since 2003. Born in Tokyo in 1973, he started to play the violin when he was 4 and joined his junior high school orchestra as a double bass player at 12; his first conducting experience was with this orchestra. Later, he studied double bass with Prof. Nobuo Shiga and conducting with Prof. Kazue Kamiya at Tokyo’s Toho Gakuen School of Music, and with Prof. Frank Reinecke at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg.

 

Furusawa has performed as a double bass player with the NHK Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and other orchestras, under the direction of conductors including Seiji Ozawa, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Horst Stein, Lorin Maazel, Herbert Blomstedt, Pierre Boulez and Valery Gergiev.

 

He conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony eight times with Tokyo’s MAX Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2015, he conducted Mahler’s Second Symphony with the MAX Philharmonic to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of Second World War.

 

Furusawa was Resident Conductor of the MPO from 2016 - 2019. He also serves as conductor of the Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and cover conductor for Mark Wigglesworth, Roberto Abbado, Stéphane Denève, Jun Märkl and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

 

He conducted the MPO in Tokyo for the Asia Orchestra Week 2017, a festival under Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs. He also conducted the MPO and Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra at Iwaki Performing Arts Center.

 

He has conducted many youth ensembles including the MPO’s Encounter Training Ensemble and the Miri Tutti Project in East Malaysia as part of the MPO’s Education and Outreach Programme.