Biography

Ikurō Fujiwara (藤原いくろう, Fujiwara Ikurou, born 28 July 1958 in Kanagawa Prefecture, Yokohama, Japan), is a Japanese pianist, composer, conductor and musical producer signed under Being Inc. He is Pops Executive Producer in the Pacific Philharmonia Tokyo orchestra. Ikurō started learning piano and composing from an early age. He studied composition under Yoshio Hasegawa, Akira Kitamura, Hajime Kaburagi, Kiyohiko Kishima, and Tsuyoshi Yanagisawa; piano under Shihoko Uno, Kazuko Yasukawa, Michiko Jackson; conducting under Shigenobu Yamaoka and Konstantin D. Crimets. In 1976, Ikurō graduated from "Nihon University College of Art". In 1980s, his name appeared in the credit list of the various albums of the artist as arranger and keyboardist. At the beginning of 90's, he would focus his career more into composing and arranging music for the video gameseries Wizardry. In 1996, he was member of the Japanese band W's as keyboardist, composer and arranger.

From 1998, he has been active as an orchestral conductor and arranger for symphonic live series started firstly for Akina Nakamori, in the recent years by public well known for Mai Kuraki, Aska and Luna Sea. Since the 2000s, he started to release his original albums under subtitles "Densetsu" and "Eternal Animation Healing" music; composed soundtracks for number of domestic television series and theatrical movies in Shanghai, Singapore and Japan. His original works have been well received by critics.In 2002, Ikuro's instrumental piece "Deep Sea" was used as background music for the South Korean television series Winter Sonata. He performed it 5 years later, in 2007 at Seoul Women's Plaza.The music in the 2008's movie Painted Skin has received 2 Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Original Film Score and Best Original Film Song (as for the first time in the history of Japanese music), and 1 nomination on Changchun Film Festival for the Best Music.In 2020, he launched one-day live show "KURO Fujiwara New Year's Piano Live 2020 “Yuki no Hana" held in Tokyo with the vocal guests Yumi Shizukusa from the same agency. Before Shizukusa's retirement, it was marked to be her final live performance to be seen. In 2021, Ikuro released his first vocal recording song under EP title "Yokohama Star Dust" in digital format.