Tenor
Friday 27th June 2025, 8:00 pm: The King’s Singers – Angels and Demons
I was born into a musical and bicultural household: my English father, a Cathedral organist and choir trainer; and my Japanese mother, who loves to sing in his choirs! Having fallen asleep most nights as a baby to Dad’s recordings of Bach and other organ works, inevitably I wanted to learn the piano and to sing. So at the age of 8, I went off to boarding school in Cambridge, where I became a chorister at St John’s College Choir for the next five years. There, I grew particularly fond of the violin, which overtook my other instruments, and ultimately led to me performing the Bruch violin concerto in my final year at Eton College aged 18.
After some character-building travels during my gap year, I returned to St John’s to study Music, and experienced three incredibly busy but rewarding years as an undergrad. Through daily choir commitments, directing The Gents (our college a cappella group), helping to organise the entertainment at college balls, and spending any remaining time left over in the library – or possibly the pub – I came to realise that a career in singing might be worth a punt after all. So rather than following the standard path of my peers applying for internships and fast-track schemes upon graduating, I instead went on a year abroad to charming Heidelberg University in Germany. Intensively learning German to fluency and planting myself in a completely different field – socially, linguistically and culturally – was a great way of taking some time out and working on myself; and what a beautiful part of the world to live in for 10 months! I made friends for life from all over the world – something which struck a chord with my own international background – and that same year, I was awarded a scholarship to study a Masters in Vocal Performance at the Royal Academy of Music, back home in London.
What followed was a highly inspirational year at the RAM, opening myself up to the various art forms and states of mind that a solo singer navigates on stage and off. The following summer of 2014, while I was singing in the Opera Chorus at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in the south of France, I got a phone-call from Johnny inviting me to audition for The King’s Singers – a completely different proposition to my exciting yet uncertain young solo career at the time. I was offered the tenor position minutes after the audition ended and the shock hit me: my life was about to change in a big way!
Since then, I’ve enjoyed my time in the group ever more, developing as an individual, learning from every experience, and striving to perform my best at each concert, I think in part to prove to myself that I deserve such a special job. I feel so lucky to be able to work every single day with five amazing friends and colleagues – akin to family – whom I respect and admire deeply, and I look forward to continuing to grow and hopefully inspire on a daily basis!