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JUNICHI HIROKAMI
MUSIC DIRECTOR
Born in Tokyo, Junichi Hirokami studied piano, composition and music under Atsutada Otaka before studying conducting and graduated at Tokyo College of Music. At 26, he became the winner at the first Kondrashin International Conducting Competition in Amsterdam in 1984.
Since 1990, Hirokami has appeared as guest conductor with major orchestras throughout the world including the Orchestre National de France, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, London Symphony Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, L'Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.
Apart from guest appearances, he has served as Chief Conductor of Sweden's Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and the Limburg Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Principal Conductor of Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra.
In Japan, he has conducted all major orchestras including NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Saito Kinen Orchestra. He received great acclaim for his appearance with the Mito Chamber Orchestra. He is prolific in opera, having led celebrated performances of Un ballo in maschera and Rigoletto at the Sydney Opera House. Other triumphs include La Traviata at the Fujiwara Opera, Le Nozze di Figaro and Ainadamar at the Nissay Theatre, and La Traviata and Aida at the New National Theatre.
From 2008 to 2022, he has achieved a golden era in Kyoto as Chief Conductor as well as Music and Artistic Advisor of the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra for 14 years. In 2015, he received an award at the Suntory Music Award with Kyoto Symphony Orchestra.
Currently, he serves as Friend of JPO / Artistic Advisor at Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and Friendship Conductor at Sapporo Symphony Orchestra. He was Artistic Leader at Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa for the 2022/23 season. He serves as professor of conducting division at Tokyo College of Music.
NAOHISA FURUSAWA
RESIDENT CONDUCTOR
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 Professor Nobuo Shiga and conducting with Professor Kazue Kamiya at Toho Gakuen School of Music (Tokyo, Japan); and with Professor 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 such as Seiji Ozawa, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Horst Stein, Lorin Maazel, Herbert Blomstedt, Charles Dutoit, Fabio Luisi, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mstislav Rostropovich, Paavo Järvi, Pierre Boulez and Valery Gergiev.
He 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 and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony nine times with the MAX Philharmonic Orchestra (Tokyo, Japan). In 2015, he conducted Mahler’s Second Symphony with the MAX Philharmonic to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Furusawa was the Principal Conductor of the Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (MPYO) from 2020 to 2021 and is currently the Resident Conductor of the MPO. He also served as covering conductor for Mark Wigglesworth, Roberto Abbado, Stéphane Denève, Jun Märkl and Vladimir Ashkenazy.
The MPO, under his baton, kicked off its 18th Season in 2016 with four sold-out concerts themed A Musical Journey in Anime featuring the works of acclaimed Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi at Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS (DFP). He conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in DFP as well in 2017 for the 60th Anniversary of the diplomatic relations between Malaysia and Japan with a combined choir consisting of choirs from The Dithyrambic Singers (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), The Choir of Gonville and Caius College (Cambridge, United Kingdom) and The MAX Philharmonic Choir (Tokyo, Japan).
His first conducting tour with the MPO and Malaysian pianist, Tengku Irfan was in Japan at the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall for the Asia Orchestra Week (AOW) in 2017, a festival under Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs. He also conducted the side-by-side orchestra with the MPO and Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra (Osaka, Japan), as part of AOW at the Iwaki Performing Arts Centre.
He made his debut with the MPYO in the International Youth Orchestra Festivals at the Esplanade, Singapore in 2017, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Hong Kong in 2018, and Taman Ismail Marzuki, Jakarta in 2019.
Furusawa and the MPO have toured Kota Kinabalu, Kuching, Johor Bahru and Melaka in 2018, and Dalian, China in 2019.