Masayuki Hirahara

Masayuki Hirahara (平原 誠之 Hirahara Masayuki July 15, 1980) is a Japanese pianist and composer. Early life Masayuki Hirahara was born and raised in Kobe, Japan. He started taking piano lessons when he was eight years old. Through these lessons, he became interested in composition and he studied it by himself. In his first year of the high school, he studied under a pianist who had graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts for one year. After that, he taught himself how to play and compose. In 1999 he participated in the music competition of the Great Hanshin earthquake (Kobe earthquake) Reconstruction Memorial Classic Festival and he won Hyogo Arts & Culture Association’s Prize and a golden award in composition section. He worked for a publisher which publishes a monthly piano magazine from 2000 to 2003. Performing and composing career With the encouragement of those who heard his performance in 1999, he started his career as a performer at a hall in Kobe in February 2003. His performances moved the audiences and his reputation spread by word of mouth; he held a concert at an 800-person capacity hall in Tokyo in October of the same year. In 2009, Princess Takamado heard his pe