SHUNGO MORIAMA made his conductor’s debut in 1977, and gave his first performance overseas in Bulgaria as a guest to the Sofia Philharmonic in 1986, with numerous other visits to follow. In 1990, he initiated contacts with New Zealand’s classic audiences: conducted the Christchurch Youth and Symphony Orchestras, then, in 1994, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and was the first Japanese conductor invited to conduct for an entire season at the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Moriyama specialized in ballet conducting with performances of original Russian choreographic versions with Konstantin Sergeyev, the leading conductor of the Russian Ballet Academy at the Mariyinski Theatre.
Conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Hungarian Railways (MAV) Orchestra, Budapest, featuring an international choir including participants from Hungary, Poland, Germany, Austria and Japan, during the European Picnic Memorial Ceremony in Sopron (Hungary) in 1997 – a concert, broadcast by the Hungarian Duna Television for all European countries.
Following his Swan Lake performance of at the Musorgsky Theatre, he was invited for a four-year period to serve as chief guest conductor of the St. Petersburg Concert Orchestra. Received an honorary member diploma from the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Society in 2000 after his successful performance of the Ninth Symphony in the great Hall of St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, and two years later was invited to conduct a concert in celebration of the society’s two-hundredth anniversary. Moriyama has also conducted performances of the Japanese ballet at the Alexandrine Theatre in St. Petersburg, the Theatre of Drama in Pskov and the Academic Theatre of Novgorod on the occasion of 300 years from the foundation of Saint Petersburg in 2003.
An enormous success, his 2002 performance of the Taketori Story Concerto and the Buddha Symphony by Koichi Kishi (1909-1937), and particular popularity attended his rendition of the Buddha Symphony in the Todaiji Temple in Nara, as a tribute to the spiritual leader Kokei, who renewed the Temple.
Since 1997, Moriyama organizes on annual basis concerts for soloists from Japan with the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra.