Dai Fujikura meets his old Housemaster Mike Vanderhoeven. Photo copyright to Jules Serkin at Press Up.

Dai Fujikura, famous modern classical music composer and ex-pupil from Dover College came back to his roots. Dai's international fame is to be documented by a Japanese producing company. Dover College played an important part in helping Dai develop his confidence and individual talent by allowing him to through himself into his music. Here is what his old Housemaster, Mr Vanderhoeven - still at Dover College - said: " Dai was a delightful young man from the moment he joined us 17 years ago. He had very little English but was clearly a prodigious musical talent. He played the piano and scored one of the highest marks ever awarded for the grade 8 piano examination. When he was with us he was absolutely no trouble at all. He is right that we were able to turn a blind eye to some of the things that he did, I would let him off games so that he could practice his music, which he did every day. Right from the start it was clear that he was going to be a professional musician and at the college we were keen to allow him to develop and to express himself. He was a very popular young man in our international community, like now we had students from around the world and they all mixed and joined in together. We were remembering that his room mate was English but that next door was a Norwegian and upstairs a French student. He became very close friends with a talented English student who had been a choral scholar and who ironically now works and lives in Japan!It is always lovely to see our old pupils and we have followed Dai's career with a mixture of pride and interest. In February of this year he had a piece played as a World Premiere at the Royal Festival Hall and we were able to take a bus load of our current musicians up to the concert and to suprise Dai. It was a memorable experience."

To view the Meridian Television programme featuring Dai please follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSARN_dU8g