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Born in 1978, he started learning the piano and the violin from the age of 2, and the cello from the age of 6. He started becoming active from a very young age. When he was 5, he made his TV debut in the progression s of Mr. Minoru Ozone and Mr. Yasushi Akutagawa. At 10, he performed Mozart’ s concerto with his origin al cadenza. Since winning the 1990 All-Japan Student Music Competition, he has gone on and won several m ajor competitions in the country. In 1993, he received a commendation from the Sendai City Board of Educa tion for educational achievement. In 1996, he joined the first Hamamatsu International Piano Academy. After winning third place at the Clara Schumann International Piano Competition (the judges included Martha Ar gerich and Nelson Freire), he was hailed as “intelligent and talented” by Dr. Joachim Kaiser. Later, he woul d go on to win more than 10 awards at international competitions. After graduating from Kobe University, all the judges unanimously awarded him the Diplôme Supérieur de Concertiste for both piano and chamber music at L’ Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris (all the judges awa rded him full marks for chamber music). He studied the piano with Reiko Kumagai, Mikhail Voskresensky, F rance Clidat, Jean Micault, György Nádor and Zoltán Kocsis,chamber music with Nina Patchett and Christi an Ivaldi, and musicology with Akio Okada. In addition to major concert halls within Japan, he has performed in USA, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Taiwan and Columbia. From 2016, he has served as a judge for Hungary`s Danubia Talents International Music Competition. After performing with the Danube Symphony Orchestra in 2015, he performed with them once again in 2017, and was also invited to the Danubia Talents Music Fes tival in Vác (Hungary). He has been scheduled to judge at recitals in Taipei and Kecskemét Spring Festival (Hungary), as well as the International Piano Competition in Xàbia (Spain). He has performed with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Metropolitan Orchestra, the Royal Cham ber Orchestra and the Danube Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Yuri Nitta, Yukinori Tezuka, Shunsaku Tsutsumi, Toshimi Nishimoto, Kazufumi Yamashita, and András Deák. He has also performed chamber music with members of the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. Many of the tracks can be found on YouTube. “Due Domenici” , “Angel del Piazzolla” , “And the Bell Tolls” and “Hommage a Invention” , which were released under King International, have been acclaimed in several magazines. He has mentored over 1,000 musicians, and has produced many winners at major domestic and overseas competitions (PTNA Grand Prix, Silver Award, Gold Award, Tokyo Music Competition Champion etc.) Other than being a judge and a Masterclass lecturer, he has also written essays which were published in newspapers and maga zines. He also had his new book, Akamatsu Rintaro Niji no Yo ni” published (Douwashoin, 2016). He often a ppears in “Utsukushii Kimono” . Currently, he is a councilor and member of the performance committee at the Piano Teacher’ s National As sociation of Japan. He is also a lecturer at the Budapest International Piano Masterclass (co-organized by L iszt Academy of Music, Hungary), a graduate school visiting professor at Senzoku Gakuen Music College, a specially-appointed associate professor at Osaka College of Music (since 2018), and a special music lecturer at Sapporo Otani Junior and Senior High School. Rintaro Akamatsu
