About

Yuji Nakamura is an Australasian Registered Piano Technician (A.R.P.T.) recognized by Piano Tuners and Technicians Guild of New Zealand Inc (PTTGNZ). He joined the Guild in 1999. Also he has been a member of the Australasian Piano Tuners and Technicians Association Inc. (APTTA) which is parent association of PTTGNZ.

Yuji began training as a piano tuner/technician with Yamaha Corporation in 1982. He spent initial five years at piano factories including concert piano division. He experienced manufacturing process of upright pianos and grand pianos. He especially learned advanced techniques at concert piano factory such as voicing, damper adjustment, regulation and tuning. Following this, he worked as a concert tuner and technician in the Tokyo branch, and then in the sales department of the Hokkaido branch office as technical support.

In 1993, he joined the Hokkaido Music Academy where he was in charge of training apprentice piano tuners. The following year, he was appointed chief instructor of the academy's piano technique department, a position he held until 1999, when he moved to New Zealand and started working for Jenkin Piano Service.

Yuji tuned for private customers, and for recording studios and concert venues around Auckland as well as carrying out restoration, rebuilding and repair work. He was also primarily responsible for the training of Jenkin Piano Service's apprentices and was a partner in the company.

In 2008 Yuji undertook specialist grand piano training at the Shigeru Kawai facility in Ryuyo, Japan. 

As an ARPT member of the PTTGNZ, Yuji has run practical classes at local workshops in New Zealand as well as at the 2013 Sydney, 2015 Perth and 2017 Adelaide APTTA conventions. He gave a weekend seminar on touch weight and inertia in Upright and Grand pianos to the Piano Tuners and Technicians Guild Queensland (a branch of the APTTA) in October 2014, and had 3-days practical seminar in Sydney in April 2018.

In 2014 Yuji contributed two in-depth articles investigating touch weight and inertia in grand piano touch to the prestigious Piano Technicians Journal published by the Piano Technicians Guild (USA). Two further articles on the effects of weight and inertia in uprights were followed in early 2015.  

Yuji has been invited by many branches of Japan Piano Tuners Association, the School of Piano Technology and several private groups to have seminars on the topic of touch weight and inertia in upright and grand pianos every year since 2015. 

Yuji lives in Titirangi, West Auckland, with his wife. In his spare time he enjoys relaxing at home with a good book or taking in New Zealand’s spectacular native scenery.