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About the Philharmonic > The Music Director Fusao Kajima"(Kajima) touches the minds and hearts of audiences," the Chicago Tribune wrote. As a conductor, Fusao Kajima has been winning critical acclaim for his leadership in both artistic commitment and innovative program offerings. 2007-2008 is his tenth season as Music Director of the Bellevue Philharmonic.
Maestro Kajima has conducted throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States, including the symphony orchestras of Shinsei Nihon in Tokyo, National Taiwan, Taipei Metropolitan, St. Petersburg in Russia, Pescara in Italy, Malaga in Spain, and orchestras of the Robert Schumann Philharmonic in Germany, and the Academic Philharmonic of Trento, Italy. He was also invited by Neeme Järvi to participate in the David Oistrakh Music Festival in Estonia. His future guest engagements include the Belgrade Philharmonic in Serbia and the Academy Orchestra of Gran Teatre Liceu in Barcelona, Spain. He has also demonstrated his interest in training young musicians. He was invited to give masterclasses at the National Fine Arts University, the National Teachers College, and Don-Hai University in Taiwan.
A native of Japan, Fusao Kajima began his piano
studies at age four and his conducting studies at fourteen. An alumnus
of the New England Conservatory and the University of Michigan, his
teachers include Gustav Meier, Martin Katz, Veronica Jochum, and Louis
Krasner. Kajima studied at Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein, Seiji
Ozawa, and Leonard Slatkin, at Chigiana with Gennady Rodhestvensky, and
also in Estonia with Neeme Järvi and Jorma Panula. |
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Previously, he has held positions of Music
Director of the Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra (CO), the Fox Valley
Symphony Orchestra (IL), the Papagena Opera Company (MI), Assistant
Conductor of the Greater Lansing Symphony Orchestra (MI), Freiburger
Theater, Staatstheater Darmstadt (Germany), and the Opera Company of
Mid-Michigan. 
Maestro Kajima has received high honors at some
of the most prestigious international conducting competitions in the
world, including the 1995 "Antonio Pedrotti," the 1988 "Masterplayers,"
and the 1985 Austrian Broadcasting Corporation Young Conductor’s Prize
Competition.