Kotaro Fukuma

Kōtarō Fukuma (ふくま こうたろう or 福間 洸太朗) is a Japanese classical pianist born 29 August 1982 in Kokubunji City, west of the special wards of Tokyo.

Fukuma has worked with personalities such as Jorge Chaminé, Klaus Hellwig, Leon Fleisher, Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, Alicia de Larrocha, Maria João Pires, Leslie Howard, Dominique Merlet, and Aldo Ciccolini.

Passionate about contemporary music, he has created national and world premieres of works by Tōru Takemitsu, Matsuo Shishido,Farhad Poupel,[2] Renaud Gagneux, Thierry Escaich, Thierry Huillet, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Seongju Oh, Francesco Milita, Pascal Zavaro.

His recordings have been praised in most trade magazines (such as Gramophone in Great Britain) or in the daily press, particularly in France in the evening newspaper Le Monde which, in its edition dated Tuesday 30 September 2014, attributed to Kotaro Fukuma "magician fingers" about the Dumka record, and in books about piano.

[4] Fukuma also likes to perform with other artists in shows that combine figure skating (Ice Legends, Fantasy on Ice, in 2014, 2015, 2016, with Stéphane Lambiel) or theatre (Le Rappel des Oiseaux - after Gogol's Diary of a Madman, with Paris Opera star dancer Mathieu Ganio, directed by Orianne Moretti - Paris 2016 and 2018).

Fukuma rehearsing in 2013