Kotaro Fukuma was born in Tokyo in 1982. He began his piano studies at the age of five and in 2001 entered the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, where he studied the piano with Bruno Rigutto and chamber music with Marie-Françoise Bucquet. He now studies with Klaus Hellwig at the Berlin Universität der Künste and participates regularly in the Como International Piano Academy in Italy.

Among other competition awards, Kotaro Fukuma took second prize and the special prize for the performance of a Finnish piece in the Helsinki Maj Lind International Piano Competition and was the first prize winner of the 2003 Fifteenth Cleveland International Piano Competition.

He made his début recital in the Lincoln Center (Alice Tully Hall) in New York and has gone on to give over 40 concerts in the United States, with appearances throughout Europe, in South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa and Japan. He boasts an extensive repertoire, including over 25 piano concertos. His first recording, a disc of Schumann piano music for Naxos (8.557668), was released in 2004 and received wide international critical acclaim.

Pianist Kotaro Fukuma interpretiert Beethovens Klaviersonaten (Kölnische Rundschau)