Yu Kurokawa
First prize at the 75th Japan Music Competition, Iwatani Prize (audience prize) and three other special prizes; Anna Piciulin Special Prize at the 2015 Rudolfo Lipizzi International Violin Competition and the audience prize at the 6th Sendai International Music Competition.

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Orquesta Nacional de España, Brussels Chamber Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra, Osaka Symphony Orchestra, Okayama Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition to performing with major orchestras in Japan and abroad, including the New Japan Philharmonic, Kyoto City Symphony Orchestra, Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra, Osaka Symphony Orchestra and Okayama Philharmonic Orchestra, he has also been well received in recitals and chamber music. She has received numerous awards for her performance activities, including the Idemitsu Music Award, the Aoyama Music Award Aoyama Prize, the Kurashiki City Arts and Culture Encouragement Award, the Okayama Arts and Culture Award Grand Prix, the Music Critic Club Award Encouragement Award, the Kyoto Prefecture Cultural Award Encouragement Award and the Kyoto City Art Newcomer Award. Her performance with the Prague Chamber Symphony Orchestra in Rudolfinum at the International Music Festival Young Prague was highly acclaimed by the late violinist Josef Suk, and she was invited to perform at the Waldstein Palace and other venues in the Czech Republic. In recent years, she has been actively engaged in premieres of new works, including Sonitus Vitalis VI - Hymn by Tokuhide Niimi and The Twin Birds by Ichiro Hirano.

Her performance at the subscription concert of the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra was recorded on the CD 'Masterpiece Live Series' (Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2, conducted by Junichi Hirokami), and 'Brahms: Violin Sonatas' will be released in July 2011. She has made numerous media appearances, including NHKBS Premium Classical Club, Best of Classics, Enter the Music and Untitled Concert.

After studying in Vienna and Brussels, she received a full scholarship to study at the Toho Gakuen School of Music (Master's Degree) and completed her higher studies at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Musique. Studied under Hideo Kojima, Chihiro Kudo, P. Vernikov, Keiko Urushihara, Yuzuko Horigome, Hamao Fujiwara, S. Rusev and F. Szigeti.

(Scholarship recipient of the 37th Ezoe Memorial Recruit Foundation and Rohm Music Foundation 2016,2017. Part-time lecturer at Kyoto City University of Arts.

Instrument used is Guarneri del Gesu (1742). Bow used is Howard Green.

Wataru Hisasue
Born in Kyoto (Japan) in 1994. He began playing the piano at the age of 5. Wataru Hisasue received his first prize at the age of 12 at the 8th International Chopin Piano Competition in Asia. In 2015 he won the "First Grand Prix" and the "Musideco" prize at the 2nd Concours International de Piano - Ville de Gagny, at the 7th Concours International de Piano de Lyon he won both the first prize and the audience prize and in 2016 at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University Competition he won the first prize in piano and the "German Pianist Prize" - awarded by the International Piano Forum Frankfurt. In 2017 he received the third prize at the 66th ARD Music Competition as well as the special prize for the best interpretation of the commissioned work by Pascal Dusapin.

Numerous solo performances took place such as in Tokyo, Kyoto, Berlin and Paris. Wataru Hisasue performed at the Konzerthaus Berlin at the "Young Euro Classic Festival 2016", in Mülheim with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and at the "AUDI Music Festival 2016" he performed with the Georgian Chamber Orchestra in Ingolstadt. He followed an invitation to the festival "Prèmiere Rencontre autour du piano 2016" in Guadeloupe, where he gave a master class in addition to piano solo recitals. At the music festival "42nd Fränkische Musiktage 2017" in Alzenau, he performed with the renowned cellist Tanja Tetzlaff.

In 2013 he began his bachelor's degree in piano at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg with Prof. Gilead Mishory. In 2015/2016 he studied as an Erasmus student at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (CNSMDP), where he took piano lessons with Prof. Emmanuel Strosser and improvisation chorégraphique with Prof. Franck Prévost and Deborah Shannon-Diouf. Since October 2017, he has been studying in the Master's programme at the Berlin University of the Arts with Prof. Pascal Devoyon and Prof. Klaus Hellwig. He was supported as a scholarship holder by the Heiwado Foundation in Japan, the Freunde-Junger-Musiker Berlin e.V., the Rohm Music Foundation in Japan and the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Hochschule für Musik Freiburg e.V. (Carl Seemann Prize 2015). In collaboration with the Italian label "Musideco", his first recording was produced in 2015 and can be heard on music download/streaming websites such as iTunes, Amazon and Googleplay.