Pianist Natsuki Fukasawa's career has taken her around the world in the role of both soloist and chamber musician. As a founding member of the award-winning Jalina Trio, Natsuki has won many accolades and international prizes, including the 2004 Best Chamber Music Recording of the Year from the Danish Music Awards and a January 2006 rave review in Fanfare magazine. The reviewer wrote of the trio's recording of the Mendelssohn and Brahms piano trios: "Never–and I mean never–have I heard either of these works played with such expressive nuance and exquisite, heartfelt sensitivity. When I am moved to tears of joy, I know I am hearing what music can and should be."
Natsuki collaborates regularly with many fine chamber musicians in Northern California and appears frequently in concerts. Her recent appearances include concerto performances with Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra and Michael Morgan (Beethoven Third), Camellia Symphony Orchestra and Allan Pollack (Rachmaninov Second), duo concerts with U.C. Davis Faculty cellist Susan Lamb Cook and Artist-in-Residence violinist Ben Kreith, and with world renowned French pianist Pascal Rogé. Natsuki is happy to return to perform in the Chamer Music Alive! series and with Ben Dominitz for the fourth time today.
During 2009, Natsuki debuts with the Folsom Lake Symphony and Michael Neumann in a performance of Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4, Merced Symphony and Maestro Henrik Hansen in a performance of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, as well as with the Symphony of the Redwoods and Maestro Allan Pollack performing Dohnanyi’s Variations on a Nursery Song. She is also appearing with her pianist husband Richard Cionco in a program of 4-hands duet music.
A recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, Natsuki is a graduate of The Juilliard School, the Prague Academy of Music, and recently earned her doctorate from the University of Maryland. She began early studies with her mother and since then has studied with pianists Mark Richman, Martin Canin, Ferenc Rados, Anne Koscielny, Jan Panenka, Fumiko Ishikawa, and violist Tim Fredericksen. Her trio studied intensively at the Isaac Stern Carnegie Hall Chamber Music Workshop as well as at the Jerusalem Music Encounters.
Natsuki has performed throughout the U.S., Japan, Australia, Europe, and in Israel, including such venues as Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and the Chicago Cultural Center. Her performances have been broadcast throughout the U.S., including National Public Radio, WQXR and WNYC in New York, and Yomiuri Television in Japan, Czech National Radio, ABC Radio in Australia, and “Good Morning Denmark” (Television).
Critics have called her playing “powerful and convincing” (Washington Post), and “with an unusually organic breadth” (Berlingske Tidende, Copenhagen). Natsuki’s recent performance highlights include a tour of Italy performing Gershwin’s Concerto in F with Maestro Leo Eylar and the California Youth Symphony, and concerto performances of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, Liszt’s Totentanz, and Saint-Säens’ Carnival of the Animals.
Natsuki serves as an artist faculty member at the Schlern International Music Festival in Italy, and coaches for the California Capital Chamber Music Workshop and is the Associate Director of the Sacramento Youth Symphony Advanced Chamber Music Workshop. She has also served as a Visiting Professor of Piano at California State University, Sacramento and St. Mary’s College of California in Moraga, and is a devoted teacher for her private studio. Natsuki’s playing can be heard on the Da Capo and Classico labels as well at Musiqbase.com and her career is noted in the World of Women in Classical Music and Who’s Who in American Women.