Simple Gifts

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.