Tomoharu Ushida

©Ariga Terasawa

Born in Iwaki City, Fukushima on 16 October, 1999. Immediately after his birth, Tomoharu’s father was transferred to Shanghai with his family and Tomoharu grew up in Shanghai until 6 years old.

Tomoharu showed an exceptional talent in music from his early age and started piano from 3 years old. At 5 years old, he won the 1st prize at a piano competition for children organized by Shanghai City.

Starting from 2008 (8 years old), he has won the 1st prize at Chopin International Piano Competition in Asia for 5 consecutive years. In February 2012, Tomoharu won the 1st prize at the 16th Hamamatsu International Piano Academy Competition (youngest winner in its history). In March 2012 (12 years old), his first CD was relerased from Universal Music Japan. It was the youngest CD debut as Japanese pianist in history.
Since then, Tomoharu has performed concerts throughout Japan and his CDs are released every year.

In May-June, 2014, he toured in Japan with the Wiener KammerOrchester led by Mo. Stefan Vladar. It was the first time for Tomoharu to perform with a foreign orchestra. In September 2014, Tomoharu was invited to play Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 with Kaohsiung Symphony Orchestra in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

In June-July, 2015 he was on a concert tour with Russian National Orchestra under the baton of Mo. Mikhail Pletnev and all the concerts were highly acclaimed both by the public and the orchestra. Future engagements include number of recitals throughout the country, and concerti with different orchestras in Japan.

Tomoharu now studies in Japan under Prof. Yuri Slesarev and Prof. Vladimir Ovchinnikov, professors of Moscow Conservatory.