Further success for HfMT conducting class

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Yu Sugimoto, a master's student from Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr's conducting class, has reached the final round of the Besançon International Music Festival

Founded in 1948, the International Music Festival in the northern French city of Besançon ("Festival de musique de Besançon Franche-Comté") is one of the world's oldest and most renowned festivals for classical music. The competition named after him, with up to 270 participating musicians, is held annually for two weeks in mid-September. The competition has helped many famous conductors to launch their careers and become successful, including Gerd Albrecht, Seiji Ozawa, Michel Plasson, Zdenek Macal, Jiri Kout, Jesus Lopez Cobos and Sylvain Cambreling.

Biography
Yu Sugimoto, born in Kyoto (Japan) in 1990, initially performed as a pianist at various concerts in Japan and Europe (Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany and Italy, among many others) and received awards in numerous competitions. From March 2012 to June 2015, he studied piano and chamber music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) with Prof. Avedis Kouyoumdjian. Since October 2015, he has been a conducting student at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama with Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr and David de Villiers. In Japan, he conducted the opera "Hansel and Gretel" by Humperdinck with the Seiji Ozawa Academy Orchestra at the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto and after that he periodically conducted the operas such as "Magic Flute" "La clemenza di Tito" "Rigoletto" "Eugene Onegin" "Altina" "Oreste" "The Emperor of Atlantis" (by Ulmann) etc. So far he has conducted the Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra, Kyoto Symphony Orchestra (in Japan), Staatsoperette Dresden, the Symphonic Orchestra of the Landestheater Detmold, Philharmonie Baden-Baden, Thüringer Symphoniker Saalfeld-Rudolstadt, Staatskapelle Halle, Sinfonieorchester Münster, the Philharmonic Orchestra of the City of Heidelberg and Orchestra Sinfonica Abruzzese (in Italy). As part of his conducting studies, he regularly works with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra of the HFMT Hamburg. He was a semi-finalist (last 6 out of 270 participants) in the 2019 Besancon Conducting Competition. In 2012 and 2013 he also received a scholarship from the Rohm Music Foundation on the recommendation of Seiji Ozawa and Yuji Yuasa. From 2016 to 2018 he was supported by the Conductors' Forum of the German Music Council.