Hiromitsu Agatsuma

Born July 27, 1973 in Ibaragi Prefecture, Japan, the 14-year-old winner of the 1987 All-Japan Tsugaru Shamisen Competition began his studies of the Tsugaru Shamisen instrument at the age of six. Agatsuma, this young artist was awarded the top prize in the Tsugaru Shamisen National Competition, the country’s most prestigious competition for two consecutive years in 1995 and 1996. Despite the high acclaim he has received in the Hogaku (Japanese traditional folk music), he has never ceased to continue to explore the potentials of his instrument and his musical specialty. While Agatsuma was receiving attention from mass media, he debuted from Toshiba EMI in Japan with the self-titled album “Agatsuma” in September 2001, and he won the “Traditional Japanese Music Album of the Year” on the 16th Japan Gold Disc Award on that year. In “Beams,” Agatsuma’s second album released in July 2002 in Japan, he recorded ten original works, further pursuing the potentials of Tsugaru Shamisen.