Dai Fujikura
About this Artist
Born in Osaka, Japan, Dai Fujikura was 15 when he moved to the U.K. The recipient of many composition prizes, he has received numerous international co-commissions from the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, BBC Proms, Bamberg Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, and more. He has been Composer-in-Residence of the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra since 2014 and held the same post at the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France in 2017–18. Fujikura’s first opera, Solaris, co-commissioned by the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Opéra de Lausanne, and Opéra de Lille, had its world premiere in Paris in 2015 and has since gained a worldwide reputation. A new production of Solaris was created and performed at the Theater Augsburg, Germany, in 2018, and the opera received a subsequent staging in 2020.
In 2017, Fujikura received the Silver Lion Award at the Venice Biennale. That year he was also named Artistic Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Theater’s Born Creative Festival.
In 2019, his Shamisen Concerto was premiered at the Mostly Mozart festival in Lincoln Center, and there have so far been nine performances of this work by various orchestras.
The year 2020 saw the premiere of his fourth piano concerto, Akiko’s Piano, dedicated to Hiroshima Symphony’s Peace and Music Ambassador Martha Argerich and performed as part of its Music for Peace project. His third opera, A Dream of Armageddon, premiered at New National Theatre Tokyo the same year.
Fujikura’s works are recorded by and released mainly on his own label, Minabel Records, in collaboration with Sony Music, and his compositions are published by Ricordi Berlin.
Upcoming works include an opera on the life of Hokusai, a concerto for two orchestras, and a double concerto for flute and violin.