Since founding the Bach Collegium Japan in 1990, Masaaki Suzuki has established himself as a leading authority on the works of Bach. He has been their musical director ever since, regularly taking them to major venues and festivals in Europe and the United States and building an exceptional reputation for the expressive refinement and truth of their performances.

In addition to working with renowned early music ensembles, such as the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Philharmonia Baroque, he is invited to conduct such diverse repertoires as Britten, Beethoven, Fauré, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Stravinsky, with orchestras such as the Baltimore Symphony, Danish National Radio Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Masaaki Suzuki combines his career as a conductor with his work as an organist and harpsichordist. Born in Kobe, he graduated from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music with a degree in organ composition and performance and studied harpsichord and organ at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam with Ton Koopman and Piet Kee. Founder and professor emeritus of the early music department at Tokyo University of the Arts, he served on the choral conducting faculty of the Yale School of Music and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music from 2009 to 2013, where he remains affiliated as Principal Guest Director of the Yale Schola Cantorum.