Kobe-born Masaaki Suzuki founded the Bach Collegium Japan in 1990. He has been the ensemble's musical director ever since and regularly conducts the choir and orchestra at major concerts and festivals in Europe and the USA. The winner of the 2011 Musikfest Prize has earned a formidable reputation for the highly expressive refinement and authenticity of his performances.  His impressive discography on the BIS label, which includes all of Bach’s major choral works as well as his complete works for harpsichord, has earned him critical acclaim and numerous prestigious awards. He began recording Bach's sacred and secular cantatas in 1995 and triumphantly completed the 65-volume complete collection in 2018. Recently, the Bach Collegium Japan recorded Bach's St John Passion and St Matthew Passion, which were honoured by Gramophone.

Masaaki Suzuki is regularly invited by international ensembles to conduct repertoires as diverse as Brahms, Britten, Fauré, Mahler, Mendelssohn and Stravinsky. In the 2023/24 season, he will make his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the hr-Sinfonieorchester, the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo and return to the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Spanish National Orchestra and the Handel and Haydn Society, among others. He will also embark on an extensive European tour with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Masaaki Suzuki is a conductor, organist and harpsichordist and studied at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam with Ton Koopman and Piet Kee, among others. He founded the Department of Early Music at the Tokyo University of the Arts. He has been awarded the Leipzig Bach Medal and the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.