It is rare to find a marimba player in the world who pursues the possibilities of this instrument so deeply. When you listen to her delicate and pleasantly fluctuating tremolo, the concept of the marimba as a percussion instrument is instantly overturned. She is the most sought-after marimba player in the world today, captivating audiences with her versatile expressiveness and flexible playing technique, and creating a genre-independent repertoire with her skillful arranging abilities.
Ria began playing marimba and piano at the age of 6 in her hometown of Kumamoto, Japan, and has been arranging music since her childhood based on her special talent of being able to play without sheet music once she hears it. 18 years old, she went to Paris, France to study at the Paris Conservatoire (CNR), and won first prize at the 1st International Marimba Competition in Paris in 2003. She has performed at some of the most prestigious chamber music festivals in the world, unprecedented for a marimba player, including the Bürgenstock Festival (Switzerland), Rolandzeck International Music Festival (Germany), Zagreb International Music Festival (Croatia), Salon-de-Provence International Music Festival (France), Evermay Chamber Music Project (USA), and Pharos International Chamber Music Festival (Cyprus), performing with Emmanuel Pahud, Paul Meyer, Andreas Ottensamer, François Leleux, Eric Le Sage,Guy Braunstein, Daishin Kashimoto,Boris Brovtsyn,Nabil Shehata and others. In Japan, together with guitarist Kaori Muraji, Ria has created many new duo repertoire of guitar and marimba.
Since 2012, Ria Ideta has been a resident artist of the Munich Chamber Opera, performing various operas with the world’s first chamber orchestra including marimba, which has been attracting much attention in various places.
Ria is also actively involved in commissioning activities, and has been involved in the world premieres of many works – marimba concerto “SUGARIA” by Eric Sammut(2007, France), marimba concerto by Ohad Ben-Ari with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Kazuki Yamada (2014, Japan), and “Sawa Sawa” for marimba and chorus by Dai Fujikura with the Polish Radio Choir at the Huddersfield International Contemporary Music Festival (2017, UK). Ria has studied with Yoshihiko Mizuno, Emmanuel Séjourné, and Eric Sammut. Ria Ideta is a visiting professor at the Heisei College of Music(Japan) and the London Academy of Arts (UK), living in Berlin.