Kazushi Ono’s musical influence and vision span and connect continents and cultures, with roles as Music Director of Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra (TMSO) and Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (OBC), Artistic Director of the New National Theatre Tokyo (NNTT) and Music Director of Brussels Philharmonic. He is passionate about new music and has commissioned many works and projects, such as Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Hibiki, which premiered at Suntory Hall before featuring at the 2017 BBC Proms. He instigated NNTT’s first commissioning scheme, dedicated to Japanese composers, which has so far included operas Asters by Akira Nishimura (2019) and Dai Fujikura’s A Dream of Armageddon, which premiered in Tokyo in November 2020. Ono established himself internationally with orchestras such as London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Brussels Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Houston Symphony Orchestra, where his performance of Russian repertoire was described by the Houston Chronicle as ‘a first-rate concert steeped in stormy emotions, fragile beauty, and wide- screen grandeur’.