Conductor Masato Suzuki
Masato Suzuki received a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Tokyo National University for Fine Arts and Music (now Tokyo University of the Arts), and completed courses at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. He was awarded 20th Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the 18th Hideo Saito Memorial Fund Award, and the 18th Hotel Okura Music Award. Suzuki is Principal Conductor of Bach Collegium Japan (BCJ), Conductor and Creative Partner of Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of Ensemble Genesis. He is also the designated principal guest conductor of the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra (starting from April 2023). He has conducted orchestras including NHK Symphony Orchestra, and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. In 2017 and 2020, he produced and presented “Masato Suzuki Produces BCJ Opera Series”. Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” (2017) and Händel’s “Rinaldo” (2020) earned high praise as baroque opera’s innovation.
He regularly appears on the radio program “The Pleasure of Early Music” on NHK FM, and frequently appears as guest on TV Asahi’s program “The Untitled Concert”. He released numerous CDs including J.S. Bach’s Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings with BCJ (BIS) and a duo with the violist Antoine Tamestit (Harmonia Mundi). Executive Producer of the Chofu International Music Festival, stage direction, planning and production, and composition, Suzuki’s boundary-less activities are expected much from various quarters. Suzuki is a visiting professor at Kyushu University.

Bach Collegium Japan
Bach Collegium Japan was founded in 1990 by Masaaki Suzuki its inspirational Music Director, with the aim of introducing Japanese audiences to historically informed performances of great works from the baroque period. Comprised of both period instrument orchestra and chorus, their activities include an annual concert series of Bach’s cantatas and a number of instrumental programmes. The award-winning ensemble is now exploring classical repertoire, having released a recording of the Mozart Requiem in November 2014 and subsequent discs of Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor, which won the Choral category in the 2017 Gramophone Awards, Beethoven Missa Solemnis and Beethoven Symphony No. 9.
Bach Collegium Japan has established a formidable international reputation through their acclaimed recordings on the BIS label of the major choral works of Johann Sebastian Bach. 2014 saw the triumphant conclusion of their recorded cycle of the complete Church Cantatas, a huge undertaking initiated in 1995 and comprising over fifty CDs; this major achievement was recognised with a 2014 ECHO Klassick ‘Editorial Achievement of the Year’ award. Their recording of Bach Motets was honoured with a German Record Critics’ Award (Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik), Diapason d’Or de l’Année 2010 and also in 2011 with a BBC Music Magazine Award. They have also recently released a box set of the Secular Cantatas, a first disc of Harpsichord Concerti under the leadership of Masato Suzuki, the group’s Principal Conductor, and a new recording of the St Matthew Passion which received a Gramophone Award in 2020.
Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki have shared their interpretations across the international music scene with performances in venues as far afield as Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York and Seoul, and at major festivals such as the BBC Proms, Edinburgh International Festival, Flanders Festival, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Bachfest Leipzig and New Zealand International Arts Festival.
In 2020 the ensemble marked its 30th anniversary with a European tour in addition to their regular series of concerts at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall and Tokyo Opera City.

Soprano Rachel Nicholls
Rachel Nicholls is now widely recognised as one of the most exciting dramatic sopranos of her generation.
Following her debut at London’s Royal Opera as Third Flowermaiden / Parsifal, she has sung a wide repertoire of baroque, classical and contemporary repertoire in opera and concert throughout the UK and Europe, including the Edinburgh Festival and BBC Proms, and forged a close relationship with Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan, with whom she made several recordings. Other conductors with whom she has worked include Sir Colin Davis, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Mark Elder, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Roger Norrington, Richard Hickox, Valery Gergiev, Daniele Gatti and Gianandrea Noseda.
She first came to notice as a dramatic soprano with her highly acclaimed performances as Brünnhilde for Longborough Festival Opera, culminating in complete Ring Cycles in 2013, followed by Isolde / Tristan und Isolde in 2014. In 2013 she sang Senta / Die fliegende Hollander for Scottish Opera and in 2014 Leonore / Fidelio for the Bergen National Opera.
Recent and future opera engagements include Isolde for the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Oper Stuttgart, Oper Frankfurt, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Teatro Regio Turin, the Badische Staatstheater Karlsruhe, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and Grange Park Opera, the title role in Elektra for Theater Basel, Münster and Karlsruhe, the title role in Salome for Hannover, Brünnhilde / Götterdämmerung in Taichung, Brünnhilde / Siegfried with Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé (also released on CD), Brünnhilde / Die Walküre for English National Opera, Senta for Grange Park Opera, Marie/Marietta / Die tote Stadt for Longborough and the Korean National Opera, Fidelio for Opera North and Lithuanian National Opera, Guinevere / Gawain for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jenifer / A Midsummer Marriage in the opening concert of the 21/22 season with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (to be released on CD), Lady Macbeth / Macbeth for Karlsruhe and NI Opera, Eva / Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for Karlsruhe and ENO. Concert engagements include Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder in Rome, Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder in Tokyo, Britten’s War Requiem in Lisbon, and a LeFanu world premiere with the BBCSO at the Barbican.
Rachel Nicholls was born in Bedford and in 2013 was awarded an Opera Awards Foundation Bursary to study with Dame Anne Evans with whom she still studies.

Countertenor Alexander Chance
Described by Gramophone Magazine as staking serious claim to “the title of his generation’s most exciting British countertenor”, Alexander Chance has already built a significant reputation on the opera and concert stage and is in frequent demand as much for his interpretation of renaissance lute songs, Bach oratorio and Handel opera as for 20th-Century operatic roles and new commissions. In 2022, he became the first countertenor to win the International Handel Singing Competition, also winning the Audience Prize.
He has worked with many of the leading conductors in the early music world including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Masaaki Suzuki, René Jacobs, Masato Suzuki, John Butt, Laurence Cummings, Jonathan Cohen, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Marcus Creed, David Bates and Lionel Meunier and recent concert appearances have taken him to New York’s Lincoln Center, Tokyo Opera City, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Philharmonie de Paris, Madrid’s Teatro Real, Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana, Berliner Philharmonie, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and many others. Recent and future engagements include concerts with The English Concert, Dunedin Consort, Il Gardellino at the Concertgebouw, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchester, the London Handel Players and Freiburger Barockorchester. A European tour with Bach Collegium Japan (with whom he works regularly) this summer will see him make his debut at the BBC Proms in Bach’s St John Passion.
Alexander has given multiple recitals at Paris’s Salle Cortot with French ensembles Les Accents and Les Ombres recorded for radio broadcast by France Musique. In 2022, he gave a joint recital with Ian Bostridge, accompanied by Julius Drake, at the Ravenna Festival, featuring songs and canticles by Benjamin Britten. With the lutenist Toby Carr, he has performed English lute songs at Wigmore Hall (London), Théâtre Grévin (Paris), and will take them to de Bijloke (Gent) and Bozar (Brussels) later this season. His debut CD, ‘Drop not mine eyes’, recorded with Toby Carr, was released on the Linn label in 2023, and was named one of Gramophone Magazine’s ‘Best Albums of 2023’.
Recent and future operatic engagements include Voice of Apollo/Death in Venice for Welsh National Opera (in which he was described by both The Observer and The Telegraph as “shining visually and vocally”), Tolomeo/Giulio Cesare for English Touring Opera, Andronico / Tamerlano in semi-staged performances around Europe with the Freiburger Barockorchester and Oberon/A Midsummer Night’s Dream for The Grange Festival.
Alexander was born in 1992, and studied at Oxford University, where he was a choral scholar at New College, graduating with a first-class degree in Classics.

Tenor Makoto Sakurada
Makoto Sakurada, tenor, completed his M. A. degree at the Tokyo University of the Arts, and has also studied in Italy with Gianni Fabbrini, William Matteuzzi and Gloria Banditelli. He appears regularly with the Bach Collegium Japan, on disc as well as in concert. Active as a soloist in oratorio performances, he has also collaborated with musicians such as Jordi Savall, Philippe Herreweghe and Sigis wald Kuijken, and ensembles including Europa Galante, La Venexiana and Il Giardino Armonico. Awarded second prize at the Bruges International Early Music Competition in 2002, he also appears regularly in opera.

Bass (Baritone) Toru Kaku
Toru Kaku was born in Fukuoka, Japan. He graduated at the top of his class from the master’s degree program of Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School, earning the graduate school’s Akansas Award and Mai Muto Scholarship. He graduated as valedictorian from the Nikikai Opera Institute’s master class program, receiving the Outstanding Achievement Award and Shizuko Kawasaki Award.
Kaku won Second Prize in the 20th Yuai German Lied Competition, and was a Chanel Pygmalion Days Artist for 2014.
Toru Kaku has a diverse repertoire ranging from Baroque to modern music. With Bach Collegium Japan, he participated in a CD of the St Matthew Passion, and in January 2021 earned acclaim for his performance in the title role in Elias.
In the recital series “B→C,” produced by the Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation, Kaku gave dazzling performances of songs in ten languages to full houses in both Tokyo and Fukuoka.
In the field of opera, Kaku has performed numerous roles including, with the Nissay Opera, the title role in Don Giovanni, Guillermo in Cosi fan Tutte, and Enrico in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor; and with Nikikai, Harlequin in Ariadne auf Naxos, Achilla in Giulio Cesare, Tsurukawa in Toshiro Mayuzumi’s Kinkakuji, and Falke in Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II.
In the Nikikai production of Lulu, Kaku stepped in on short notice as substitute in the challenging role of Dr. Schön, and captivated the audience with his richly expressive performance. In November 2023 he performed Number One in the Nikikai production of Henze’s The Betrayed Sea and receive accolades for his singing and acting.
In addition to opera, Kaku has earned praise for his performances in stage musicals. He toured Japan in the role of Prince Aladdin in the Nissay Opera’s Aladdin and the Magic Violin.
Kaku appeared as emcee in the 2018-2019 Weekday Matinee Concert Series, presented by the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and Suntory Hall.
He is also expanding his work in TV and radio, appearing on TV Asahi’s “Untitled Concert,” as well as programs such as NHK E-TV’s “Sukusuku Kosodate” and NHK-FM’s “Recital Nova” Kaku currently appears in a commercial for Figaro Engineering.
Toru Kaku’s fourth album, A Time for Us, was released in July 2023. In addition to three solo album releases, he has performed on other CDs including in the role of Figaro on the Mozart Singers Japan CD Le Nozze di Figaro. In April 2024, he performed a program of early Italian Baroque music on the Promusica Baroque Academy’s CD Italian Songs with Toru Kaku.
Known as an enthusiastic supporter of the J-League team Avispa Fukuoka, Kaku performed solo renditions of the Japanese national anthem at the 2021 and 2022 Meiji Yasuda J-League opening games.
Kaku is Music Director of the women’s choir Sana Texere and the mixed choir Chor Glauben Fukuoka. He is a part-time lecturer at Senzoku Gakuen College of Music.