Kazunori Seo & Makoto Ueno
Biography Kazunori Seo & Makoto Ueno
Kazunori Seo
Prize-winner of the prestigious international competitions, notably Carl Nielsen and Jean-Pierre Rampal in 1998, and more Geneva in 2001, Kazunori SEO has won attention as one of the world's outstanding flutists through numerous appearances as soloist, recitalist and chamber musician.
He has performed with especially Patrick Gallois, Jean-Michel Damase, Emile Naoumoff, Maurice Bourgue, Jörg Demus, the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, the Odense Symphony Orchestra, the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, the Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra, the Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia, the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä, the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra and the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, among others in Europe, in Asia, and in North and South America.....In 2005, he won the Pro Musicis International Award in Paris and he gives recitals regularly in Paris (Salle Cortot), New-York (Carnegie, Weill Recital Hall), Boston, Tokyo as the artist of Pro Musicis Association.
A passionate and dedicated as chamber musician, arranger & recording producer. He produce regularly many concerts and recordings for Naxos and his own label Les Ménestrels & Virtus Classics with Svetlin Roussev, Nicolas Dautricourt, Nicolas Baldeyrou, Laurent Wagschal, Jong-hwa Park, Makoto Ueno etc.... In 2011, he was commissioned by the Shirakawa-Hall in Nagoya (Japan), arranged two symbolic symphonies for chamber music. Beethoven's Eroica Symphony for 6 players and Mahler's 9th Symphony for 12 players. These arrangements got a lot of attention in the Japan music scene.
The flutist Kazunori SEO was born in Kitakyushu (Japan) in 1974. He began his musical studies since the age of 6 years with his parents who are musicians, but it is especially in Paris that he accomplished the essential of his musical studies. He studied flute in Paris with Raymond Guiot, Kurt Redel, Patrick Gallois, Benoît Fromanger and Alain Marion at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (CNSMDP) where he was awarded the 'Premier Prix' in flute in 1998. He also studied chamber music with Pascal Le Corre, Emmanuel Nunes, Christian Ivaldi, Ami Flammer, and he was awarded at the CNSMDP the 'Premier Prix' in chamber music in 1999. He concluded his musical studies with Maurice Bourgue at the CNSMDP.
Makoto Ueno
was born to a musical family in 1966 in Muroran, Japan. His grandmother and father were both organists in a local Protestant Church, and they exerted the first musical influences on him. A graduate of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, he studied with Jorge Bolet and Gary Graffman, then continued in the Mozarteum Salzburg with Hans Leygraf. Also in his formative years, Ueno received musical instructions and suggestions from diverse artists such as Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Edward Aldwell, Felix Galimir, Leon Fleisher, Rosalyn Tureck, Andrzej Jasinski, Radoslav Kvapil, and Jacob Lateiner.
He was a prize-winner at various international competitions such as Maryland, Boesendorfer=Empire(Brussels), Geneva, Orléans. In Japan, he was a recipient of the Kyoto City Prize for New Artists, and of the Aoyama Barocksaal Prize, in 2005. In June 2005 he won Second Prize at the First Sviatoslav Richter International Piano Competition in Moscow.
Ueno has given recitals throughout Japan, Korea, Thailand,Turkey, Mexico, the U.S.A., Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Holland, Latvia, and Russia.
An active soloist with orchestras, Makoto Ueno appeared with the Shinsei-Japan Orchestra, the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, the Osaka Symphony Orchestra, the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, the Kyoto Philharmonic, the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra(Washington D.C.), L’orchestre de la suisse romande, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio, the Samara Philharmonic(Russia), the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra(Norway), and OFUNAM(Mexico)
Although he usually plays modern concert pianos, Ueno is equally at home with historical instruments, often performing on Viennese and British fortepianos from 1810 to the 1820s, on a Pleyel, Streicher, Erard of 1840 to 1860.
His live TV and radio appearances have been broadcast on NHK FM and NHK TV, and solo CD recordings have been released by Octavia Records and Wakabayashi Koubou labels. Ueno’s recordings of Liszt Transcendental etudes, complete etudes by Debussy,Bartók on modern Steinway pianos, Beethoven played on Matthaeus Stein and Broadwood from early 19th Century, Debussy and Rachmaninoff with an American Steinway made in 1925, and Chopin Sonatas with Pleyel and Erard made circa 1850 have been on the market in the recent years.
Since 1996, he has been teaching as a piano faculty member at Kyoto University of Arts. In addition to his teaching at other Japanese universities and institutions, he has served as a jury in major piano competitions in Japan, and written articles and essays for various Japanese music magazines.
An avid photographer of architecture and landscapes, particularly interested in non-digital medium-format photography, Ueno has future plans to make his photographs of historic Japanese temples, shrines, and monuments around Kyoto and Nara accessible to the general public.
