Takehisa Genzoh

"Simply convincing, incredibly effective," said music critics about Genzoh Takehisa's interpretation of Buxthehude's compositions for the organ, along with his own oratorio, "Creation." The accolades came during a tour of Germany by Musica Poetica, a Japanese group led by Yumiko Tanno, director of the Tokyo Heinrich Schutz Choir. Takehisa hails from Matsuyama in Japan's Ehime Prefecture, where he began learning the harpsichord in 1969 at the age of twelve. His higher education includes a degree in musicology from the Tokyo University of the Arts, where he majored in Rhetorical Theory of 16th and 17th European Music. Takehisa has toured regularly throughout Japan as a professional since 1984, performing works from the Middle Ages through to contemporary compositions. In 1986 he also began to arrange works, and to produce his own original compositions. Takehisa has had an active recording career, releasing nearly thirty CD's of mainly renaissance and baroque works on the ALM and Aeolian labels. These recordings demonstrate Takehisa's virtuosity on a wide range of keyboard instruments, including harpsichord, organ and fortepiano. A number of issues of the leading monthly music magazine "Record Geijutsu" have featured Takehisa's CD's as CD of the Month, including in particular The Goldberg Variations and The Realms of Keyboard Music Series (Volumes 1?6). Record Geijutsu have also published several of Takehisa's essays. In 2002, Takehisa published his landmark essay "New People Make New Music". Takehisa has been a lecturer at Ferris University College of Music since 1998, and also directs his own ensemble, Conversum Musicum, which has released four CD's. He is a dynamic performer and accomplished composer with an insatiable appetite for new musical experiences.