BIOGRAPHY
“The talented Toshi Ogita… playing Malcolm, with a fine future ahead of him…”
- Jenni Balow, Verdi’s Macbeth - Review, Minack Theatre, July 2019
Japanese tenor Toshi Ogita is fast developing a reputation for his warm, lyric voice. He is a graduate of the Master’s programme at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Richard Berkeley-Steele and Anna Tilbrook. Toshi was involved in numerous projects at the Academy, including its Bach cantatas series, and has worked with Philippe Herreweghe, Rachel Podger, John Butt, and Iain Ledingham.
Recent engagements have included Chorus, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore (West Green House Opera). Opera scenes at RAM included Tamino (Mozart, Die Zauberflöte), Tonio (Donizetti, La fille du régiment), Nemerino (Donizetti, L’elisir d’amore), Monsieur Vogelsang (Mozart, Die Schauspieldirektor. Other work on the stage includes Francesca Caccini, La liberazione di Ruggiero (Brighton Early Music Festival), Tamino, Die Zauberflöte with Truro Choral Society (semi-staged excerpts, with Mozart Requiem), and Malcolm, Verdi’s Macbeth (Timothy Dean/Duchy Opera).
With his thoughtful, sensitive musicality, Toshi is also a keen recitalist. With Timothy Dean, he has performed Schubert's Schwanengesang and a selection from Schumann's Myrthen. Toshi has performed four songs from Alban Berg's Sieben frühe Lieder at RAM. With soprano Helen Lacey and Max Bilbe, semi-staged
performances of Hugo Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch are planned, having performed a selection at the Lamberhurst Music Festival. Concert performances have included Handel Messiah with Southampton Choral Society and Haydn The Creation with Winchester City Festival Choir.
Toshi has been selected to take part in workshops with British Youth Opera (Martin Lloyd-Evans and Audrey Hyland), Oxenfoord International Summer School, the New Generation Festival, Florence, and has performed in a masterclass with Florian Boesch.
Previously, Toshi read MA History of Art & History of Music at the University of Edinburgh, and has sung with the choirs of Paisley Abbey, Truro Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral, and the London Oratory. With these and other choirs, Toshi has been involved in concerts and recordings with the City of London Sinfonia, BBC NOW, and the BBC Concert Orchestra, as well as Proms performances under Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Sakari Oramo.
Formerly a double bass player, Toshi was a Hesse student at the 2014 Aldeburgh Festival. Toshi lives in Hampshire with his family and a retired greyhound.
© Biography not to be reproduced without authorised permission from toshiogita.com. Please email ogita@hotmail.co.uk for an up-to-date biography for inclusion in concert programmes and elsewhere online.
Having been introduced by Scott Johnson to the writings of Richard Miller, Kenneth Bozeman, and David L. Jones, Toshi has a keen interest in vocal pedagogy. In particular, he is interested in how the tripartite system of respiration, phonation, and resonation is a non-linear synergistic one, influencing and interacting with each other; semantic differences and their implications; the relationship between sensory perception/kinesthesia vs. what is physiologically happening; pedagogic efficiency and how certain aims are prioritised over the course of teaching an individual.
Toshi's undergraduate dissertation (2016), titled ‘Lost to the World: the visual and musical cultures of fin-de -siècle Vienna’ explored the interaction between art and music in early 20th-century Vienna, through Schopenhauer and Wagner, specifically between Mahler and Klimt. The work has been praised for its originality by Christian Weikop, Peter Vergo, and Richard Stokes. Toshi is interested in music’s role as a socio-cultural indicator, historical examples of interdisciplinary collaboration, and exploring this through programming.