Known for his “disciplined focus and clarity… and marvelous dynamic nuance,” (Arts Knoxville) Ray Ushikubo is a Japanese-American pianist and violinist who has soloed with major orchestras across the nation. Ushikubo’s 2024-2025 highlights include performing Piazzolla’s Four Seasons with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Winston-Salem and Portland Symphony Orchestras and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Ravel’s Tzigane with the Dream Orchestra, Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Saint-Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso with the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra, and Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with the Colburn Orchestra led by conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.
A recipient of the prestigious Davidson Fellow Laureate Award in 2014, Ushikubo was named a Young Steinway Artist, won the 2017 Hilton Head International Piano Competition and the 2016 Aspen Piano Concerto Competition, and was a prize-winner at the 2023 Klein International String Competition. Ushikubo made his orchestral debut at the age of ten, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Young Musicians Foundation Orchestra and conductor Teddy Abrams at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Since then, Ushikubo has soloed with the orchestras of Aspen, Buffalo, Florida, Fort Collins, Hilton Head, Kansas City, Modesto, New West, Oregon, Pasadena, Reno, San Diego, and Westchester on both piano and violin - often in the same concert. Ushikubo has worked with renowned conductors including Rodolfo Barráez, Paolo Bortolameolli, JoAnn Falletta, Norman Huynh, Laura Jackson, Jeffrey Kahane, Wes Kenney, David Lockington, Michelle Merrill, Sameer Patel, Rafael Payare, John Morris Russell, Jeff Tyzik, and Thomas Wilkins.
As a collaborative musician, Ushikubo has shared the stage of Segerstrom Concert Hall with pianist Lang Lang, with whom he later reunited and appeared together on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Ushikubo has performed with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet on the international radio broadcast Radio France, and as part of the festival Musique & Vin au Clos Vougeot, where he also performed with cellist Gautier Capuçon. With the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Ushikubo was one of the violin soloists of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins with violinists Martin Chalifour, Phillipe Quint, and Cho-Liang Lin, and was one of the piano soloists of Bach’s Concerto for Two Keyboards with pianist Jeffrey Kahane.
Ushikubo also thrives in musical settings beyond classical, having shared the stage with acclaimed singer-songwriter Jackson Browne as part of a peace ceremony honoring victims of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, hosted by the Los Angeles Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (JACCC). In 2015, he performed as piano and violin soloist in a concert presented by Grand Performances in Los Angeles featuring traditional classical works alongside jazz pianist Alfredo Rodriguez and electronic musician Daedalus, who “remixed” and improvised around the classical works, crossing the genres of classical, electronic music, and jazz. In 2019, Ushikubo recorded an improvisation session with cellist and beatboxer Kevin Olusola, member of the Grammy award-winning group Pentatonix, on the radio program From the Top.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Ushikubo double-majored and received his Bachelor’s degrees at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied piano with Gary Graffman and Robert McDonald and violin with Shmuel Ashkenasi, Pamela Frank, and Aaron Rosand. Currently, Ushikubo double-majors at the Colburn Conservatory of Music, where he studies piano with Fabio Bidini and violin with Robert Lipsett.