Hero's Journey

Taichi Fukumura is the Music Director of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and the newly appointed Assistant Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra. A rising Japanese-American conductor acclaimed for his dynamic stage presence and musical finesse, Fukumura is the Second Prize Winner of The Mahler Competition 2023 and a four-time recipient of the Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award 2021-2024.

Recent and upcoming highlights include guest conducting debuts with the Bamberg Symphony, Utah Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Eugene Symphony, Delaware Symphony, and Colorado Springs Philharmonic. He also returned to the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra as guest conductor after leading the orchestra in over 110 concerts as Assistant Conductor appointed by Music Director Robert Spano.

Other notable appearances include guest conducting members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in their Community Chamber Concert series, leading Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. He made his international debut with the Orquesta de Cámara de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and was invited by the Berlin Philharmonic as one of 10 assistant conductor candidates for Kirill Petrenko and the Siemens Conductors Scholarship in 2021. He also served as Assistant Conductor of the Chicago Sinfonietta where he previously received mentorship from Music Director Mei-Ann Chen as a Freeman Conducting Fellow. 

Engagements as cover conductor include the Minnesota Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Houston Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Chicago Philharmonic, and a return to the Aspen Music Festival as guest assistant conductor. He assisted Barbara Hannigan at Musikkollegium Winterthur in Switzerland and will assist her again at the Munich Philharmonic in 2026.

Equally adept in opera conducting, Fukumura has conducted full productions of Britten’s Turn of the Screw and Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Northwestern University Opera Theatre. As Staff Conductor at Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras – the only youth orchestra in the country to present annual opera productions – he led rehearsals of monumental works including, Puccini’s La Bohème.

A passionate advocate for music education, Fukumura led many new initiatives with the Fort Worth Symphony, including the first major update of the orchestra’s education and community programs in over a decade. Under his leadership as Director of Orchestras, the Merit School of Music co-launched the Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative to nurture the next generation of musicians through collaborations with professional organizations such as the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Music of the Baroque. As Founding Music Director, Fukumura led the endowed Northwestern Medical Orchestra to national acclaim within their first four years. His broader cultural leadership and contributions were recognized with a mayoral appointment to the Evanston Arts Council, where he collaborated with local artists and arts organizations to enrich lives and amplify previously unheard voices.

Born in Tokyo, Taichi Fukumura grew up in Boston and began music studies at age three on the violin. He holds a Bachelor of Music in violin performance from Boston University, where he studied with Peter Zazofsky, and both a Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degree in orchestral conducting from Northwestern University under the mentorship of Victor Yampolsky. Additional conducting training includes the Aspen Music Festival Conducting Fellowship with Robert Spano, Pierre Monteux School and Festival with the late Michael Jinbo, the Freeman Conducting Fellowship with Mei-Ann Chen and the Chicago Sinfonietta, and masterclasses and workshops led by Pierre-Michel Durand, Jorma Panula, Christoph Poppen, and Yip Wing-sie. Fukumura is fluent in both English and Japanese.

Described as “immaculate, at once refined and impassioned,” (ArtsAtlanta) violinist Blake Pouliot (pool-YACHT) has anchored himself among the ranks of classical phenoms. A tenacious young artist with a passion that enraptures his audience in every performance, Pouliot has established himself as “one of those special talents that comes along once in a lifetime” (Toronto Star).

Blake Pouliot’s 2024-2025 symphonic highlights include debuts with the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, San Diego Symphony, as well as the Houston Symphony, Grand Rapids Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic and the San Antonio Symphony. Blake expands his presence in Europe this season with performances with the London Philharmonic and Alevtina Ioffe, Chamber Orchestra of Europe with conductor Mattias Pintscher and cellist Alisa Weilerstein, KYMI Sinfonietta and Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire.

Recital performances this season include debuts at Carnegie Hall and La Jolla Music Society with pianist Henry Kremer. As a chamber musician, Blake will return to Seattle Chamber Music Society, Austin Chamber Music Festival, Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, and with violinist Simone Porter and pianist Hsin-I Huang he will perform at the Van Cliburn Concerts in Fort Worth, TX and BroadStage in Santa Monica, CA.

During his time as Soloist-in-Residence of Orchestre Métropolitain in 2020/21, Pouliot and Yannick Nézet-Séguin performed Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 and Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons which led to Pouliot’s 2022 debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center, performing John Corigliano’s The Red Violin (Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra) with Nézet-Séguin. Highlights elsewhere include Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal in 2022/23, with Angela Hewitt and Bryan Cheng, as well as performances of the Paganini, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns concerti and Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy in subscription series across North America.

Pouliot released his debut album of 20th century French music on Analekta Records in 2019. Featuring Ravel’s Tzigane and Violin Sonata in G, Debussy’s Violin Sonata in G minor and Beau Soir, the recording received critical acclaim including a five-star rating from BBC Music Magazine and a 2019 Juno Award nomination for Best Classical Album.

Since his orchestral debut at age 11, Pouliot has performed with the orchestras of Aspen, Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, Madison, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, and Seattle, among many others. Internationally, he has performed as soloist with the Sofia Philharmonic in Bulgaria, Orchestras of the Americas on its South American tour, and was the featured soloist for the first ever joint tour of the European Union Youth Orchestra and National Youth Orchestra of Canada. He has collaborated with many musical luminaries including conductors Sir Neville Marriner, David Afkham, Pablo Heras-Casado, David Danzmayr, JoAnn Falletta, Marcelo Lehninger, Nicholas McGegan, Alexander Prior, Vasily Petrenko and Thomas Søndergård.     

Pouliot has been featured twice on Rob Kapilow’s What Makes it Great? series and has been NPR’s Performance Today Artist-in-Residence in Minnesota (2017/18), Hawaii (2018/19), and across Europe (2021/22). Prior to that, he won the Grand Prize at the 2016 Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal Manulife Competition and was named First Laureate of both the 2018 and 2015 Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank.

Pouliot performs on the 1729 Guarneri del Gesù on generous loan from an anonymous donor.