Kenichi was born in 1986 in Sydney, and began his cello lesson at the age of two and a half with Takao Mizushima, his father, and has appeared as a soloist on many occasions since he was five. Kenichi has toured Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Italy, England, Singapore, USA and New Zealand both as a soloist and an ensemble musician. At the age of eleven he won the cello section of the Inaugural Young Instrumentalist Competition.

Kenichi’s debut as a soloist with a full orchestra was at the Adelaide Town Hall when he was twelve years old. Since then he has performed concertos regularly with orchestras nationally and internationally, including a performance with the Korean Symphony Orchestra in 2001. Under the tutelage of his teacher, Mr Zoltan Szabo, he has won numerous local eisteddfods and competitions that include the senior section of the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra Secondary School Concerto Competition in 2002 at the age of fifteen and Open Age cello section of the City of Sydney McDonald’s Challenge in 2002 and 2003. He was a recitalist at the National Youth Concerto Competition in 2003 and gave a forty-five minutes live recital for the 2MBS FM radio in 2004, 2005 and 2006. He was also the winner of 2MBS FM Young Performer’s Award in 2006. Kenichi played the Schumann Cello Concerto with Strathfield Symphony Orchestra in 2003.

After he completed high school as a music scholar, he began his Bachelor of Music
Performance Degree study at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where he received the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Board of Governors Scholarship in 2005, Joys Billing
Memorial Scholarship for the cello in 2005 and 2006 and Mary Patricia Bell Grant in 2006. In 2005 he was accepted into ENCORE Summer School at the Cleveland Institute of Music in Ohio, USA on a scholarship under Richard Aaron.

In January 2007, Kenichi visited Europe to expand his cello playing horizon, and received tuition from two world class cellists in Hungary and Germany, Miklos Perenyi and
Alexander Baillie, and was offered a scholarship to study under Professor Baillie.

In 2007, Kenichi was offered a contract to work with Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra as a soloist to play Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variation during their Sydney season, and invited to play for Melbourne season as well, alongside Australia’s prominent cellist Emma-Jane Murphy.