Biography

Hailed as “first-rate” by The Boston Globe, cellist Tomoko Fujita enjoys an active musical life as soloist, chamber musician, and educator. She was a founding member of the Bryant Park Quartet, and played with the group during its ten year history which included a self-titled album in 2014. She has also collaborated with esteemed artists such as Itzhak Perlman, members of the Cleveland, Emerson, and Juilliard String Quartets, dancer Wendy Whelan, and the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company. Currently, Tomoko is a member of the New York Chamber Music Co-Op, a performance collaborative in New York City that seeks to explore issues of social justice in the context of classical music programming, and performs additionally with pianist Luba Poliak.

Tomoko has premiered and performed many contemporary works as a soloist – she was praised in Strad magazine for her “haunting” performance of Morton Subotnick’s Axolotl – and in ensembles such as Argento Chamber Ensemble, Mimesis Ensemble, New Fromm Players, Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, and New Juilliard Ensemble. On baroque cello, she has performed with the Aulos Ensemble, and at the Boston Early Music Festival and the Naumburg Orchestral Concerts series.

Tomoko graduated summa cum laude from Rice University with a double degree: a Bachelor of Music in cello performance and a Bachelors of Arts in psychology. Having earned a Master of Music at The Juilliard School, she received a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Stony Brook University. Tomoko is Assistant Professor at the Cali School of Music at Montclair State University, and is the coordinator of the Cali Pathways Project, an initiative to support talented high school musicians from under-resourced backgrounds reach their goals of higher education and a career in music. She has previously taught at Princeton and Hofstra universities, and directed the Young Artist Program at Stony Brook University. She is a coach with the New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program. In the summers, Tomoko is in residence at the Kinhaven Music School in Weston, VT.