This concert is the North Carolina Symphony debut for Taichi Fukumura.
Taichi Fukumura is the Music Director of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and the newly appointed Assistant Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra. A rising Japanese-American conductor, Fukumura is the Second Prize Winner of The Mahler Competition 2023 and a four-time recipient of the Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award, 2021-2024.
Recent and upcoming highlights include guest conducting debuts with the Bamberg Symphony, Utah Symphony, Eugene Symphony, Delaware Symphony Orchestra, and Colorado Springs Philharmonic. He also returned to the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra as guest conductor after leading the orchestra in over 110 concerts as Assistant Conductor under Music Director Robert Spano.
Other notable appearances include guest conducting members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in their Community Chamber Concert series, leading Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat. Fukumura was invited by the Berlin Philharmonic as one of 10 assistant conductor candidates for Kirill Petrenko and the Siemens Conductors Scholarship in 2021. He also served as Assistant Conductor of the Chicago Sinfonietta where he previously received mentorship from Music Director Mei-Ann Chen as a Freeman Conducting Fellow.
Engagements as cover conductor include the Minnesota Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra, a return to the Aspen Music Festival as guest assistant conductor, and assisting Barbara Hannigan at the Munich Philharmonic and the Musikkollegium Winterthur, Switzerland.
Born in Tokyo, Fukumura grew up in Boston and began music studies at age three on the violin. He holds a bachelor's degree in violin performance from Boston University, where he studied with Peter Zazofsky, and both master's and doctoral degrees in orchestral conducting from Northwestern University under the mentorship of Victor Yampolsky. Additional conducting training includes the Aspen Music Festival and Pierre Monteux School and Festival.
