Dr Kenji Fujimura is an experienced and highly respected pedagogue with almost thirty years of teaching experience, ranging from graded exams and VCE/HSC to PhD. Kenji’s tertiary-teaching career began while he was still an undergraduate.
Kenji is currently Executive Director of the International Academy of Musical Arts (www.iamusica.org) and Sapiente Group, Patron of the Association of Eisteddfod Societies of Australia (www.eisteddfod.org.au), Founding Member of Trio Anima Mundi (www.trioanimamundi.com), and an examiner of piano for the Australian Music Examinations Board.
He has over twenty-five years of teaching at the tertiary level, and is currently a teacher of piano and chamber music at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. Prior to this Kenji was Acting/Deputy Head of School, Coordinator of Classical Performance, and Associate Professor at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University. He has supervised many research dissertations at the Master’s and Doctoral level, including candidates on piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, percussion, french horn etc. with topics ranging from Piano Flamenco to 19th-century historical performance practice.
Kenji maintains a very limited private piano and composition studio via audition. His students have had tremendous success in examinations (AMEB, ABRSM, Trinity), radio broadcasts, VCE studies (including receiving perfect scores) and at many eisteddfods and competitions in Australia and abroad.
Kenji continues to keep an active schedule in Australia and abroad as pianist, chamber musician, competitions adjudicator, and as a consultant/advisor, and gives many workshops and masterclasses every year. An internationally-acclaimed pianist and chamber musician, his recent CDs include: Trio Anima Mundi – Romantic Piano Trios (2013 Musicweb International Recording of the Year) and English Piano Trios (released January 2020- Recording of the Month), Complete Violin Sonatas of George Frederick Pinto, and The Messiaen Nexus (2014 Limelight Chamber Music Recording of the Year) with violinist Elizabeth Sellars; William Hurlstone Complete Piano Music (Musicweb International Recording of the Month, May 2015; Fanfare USA Colin Clarke’s 2015 ‘Top 5 Want List’). Upcoming recordings include solo piano music by Theodore Dubois, Ernest Guiraud, Leo Livens and others, as well as piano trios by Carl Gottlieb Reissiger and Algernon Ashton (Toccata Classics).
Kenji is also a multi-award-winning composer. His compositions have been performed throughout USA, Romania, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. Recent prizes include the Singapore Asian Composers Festival award, William Lincer Foundation Award in New York, and the VirtualArtists International Composition Award. He was a finalist in the Cum Laude International Composition Competition, Spain, in 2019.
With formative music studies in Melbourne and Tokyo, Kenji completed his four-year Bachelor of Music degree with Honours in two years at The University of Melbourne, and subsequently pursued postgraduate studies in Melbourne and London, winning prizes and accolades as pianist, fortepianist, and chamber musician.
Engagements for 2021 include three new composition commissions, jury duty for various competitions including the Melbourne International Piano and Strings Festival Competition, and the Sparta International Student Film Festival Competition (USA), numerous concert and recording projects, and a contribution to the Debussy in Context volume (Cambridge University Press).
In 2015 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London, for his ‘significant contribution to the music profession’.