Makiko Ogura

From Chiba prefecture, Makiko Ogura went to the Tokyo University of the Arts and its opera master's programme, took the Doseikai prize on graduating, and studied with 加宮葵, 高橋大海, Naoko Ihara, Rebecca Berg and Sylvia Silveri. The competition record came early: the highest vocal award at the fourteenth Ichikawa young performers' competition, an encouragement prize in the Tokyo round of the All-Japan Student Music Competition, the Asian finals of Neue Stimmen in 2005 and again in 2007, the Vienna rounds of the Hans Gabor Belvedere competition in 2006, and a finalist's place at Nagakute. She sings the alto solo in Beethoven's Ninth and in Mozart's Coronation Mass, and appears in staged productions with Tokyo Nikikai, among them Rigoletto. She was in Sofia in 2012 for Raina Kabaivanska's master class. A Yoko Ceschina scholarship enabled her to attend Kabaivanska’s summer master class in Siena.