ROMANCE

Artist Profile

• Masayuki Hirahara

  Masayuki Hirahara is a Japanese Pianist and Composer. Early Life Masayuki Hirahara was born and raised in Kobe, Japan. He started to take piano lessons when he was eight years old. Through these lessons, he became interested in composition and he studied it by himself. At the first year of the high school, he studied with a pianist who graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts for one year. After that, he has self-educated how to play and compose. In 1999 he participated in the music competition of the Great Hanshin Earthquake (Kobe Earthquake) Reconstruction Memorial Classic Festival and he won the Hyogo Arts & Culture Association's Prize and a golden award in the composition division. He worked for a publishing company which publishes a monthly piano magazine from 2000 to 2003. - Performing and composing career With the encouragement of those who heard his performance in 1999, he started his career as a performer at a hall in Kobe in February 2003. His performances moved the audiences and his reputation spread by word of mouth; he held a concert at a 800-person capacity hall in Tokyo in October of the same year. In 2009, Princess Takamado heard his performance. In 2010, international Chopin year, he was invited to play at the Chopin 200th anniversary concert at Reid Concert Hall in the University of Edinburgh, cosponsored by the Japanese Consulate General in Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh, and the Polish Consulate General in Edinburgh. In the following year, he was invited by the Japanese Consulate General in Edinburgh to performed at St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow, and the Sage Gateshead. In 2012, He was invited to perform at charity concerts in Los Angels for the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. He played the piano in a retirement home and Christ Lutheran Church, Costa Mesa in California. He lectured about composition to the master class of Yamaha Music Center in Irvine. In the same year, he performed at the Ise Grand Shrine for the 62nd Sikinen Sengu ceremony (fixed-interval transfer ceremony - wherein a shrine's sacred object is transferred to a newly constructed main hall) and he became the very first person who played the piano in the Ise Grand Shrine.

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