It’s at the age of 4 years old that Yumi Tokita from Oita, Japan, started to play the piano. She gradually learns the instrument, until she graduates from the 2nd cycle of the Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture under the teaching of Satoshi Ishiyama. Her grades allow her to hold solo concerts between 2011 and 2013, and to enter her college’s orchestra as a solist.

Moreover, her course gives her the chance to join multiple masterclasses from great western and french pianists such as Aquiles Delle-Vigne, Jean-Marie Cottet or Pierre Réach.

 

Meanwhile, Yumi participates to a few competitions and her records include among others the Special Prize in the « Star » category won during the 3rd « MusicArte » competition organized by the italian-japanese Kyoto association, as well as the 3rd prize (without any 1st nor 2nd prizes given) during the Tokyo National Classical Music Competition in 2015, the latter granting her this time a solist position in the laureates orchestra.

 

Despite the headwinds and her close acquaintances who were against her choice of becoming a musician, Yumi leaves Japan’s countryside for the very first time, alone, and heads to Paris in order to follow her path and perfect her skills. At this time, she doesn’t speak french, nor english.

From then, she enters the Normal Music School of Paris.

Various pianists will advise her : Patrick Zygmanowski, Bruno Rigutto, and especially her mentor and UNESCO artist Serguei Markarov.

 

Yumi Tokita notably performs in 2019 at the classical music concert organized during the « From the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean » festival in Paris, and in 2022 during the « 10 years of Piano in Train Station » sponsored by André Manoukian, where the contribution of the pianos in the french train stations is sublimated by inviting several professional pianists.

In 2023, Yumi holds her first overseas solo concert at the Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural Center in Paris, in which she performs a recital that gathers pieces by Franck, Rachmaninov, Smetana and Chopin.

 

If Yumi’s repertoir was for long focused on contemporary, her sensitivity increasingly opened to baroque and romanesque periods. She doesn’t wish to stay attached to any period nor composer, but she simply follows her instinct and her heart in the choice of her interpretations.