ROHM Group's Social Contribution

Music provides color to people’s lives, and enriches the mind. As a corporate citizen, ROHM works toward the spread and development of music culture, and aims to contribute to creating rich culture through music. ROHM’s support for music has a long history, and the company published a book introducing classical music entitled “A History of Music in Pictures” in 1965, shortly after ROHM was founded. It provided joy and peace to many people because there were only two music magazines available at the time. Since then, ROHM has continued a variety of activities to support music.

In 1991, ROHM and its founder established the Rohm Music Foundation to continually and stably conduct such activities, and it operates with two thematic goals.

The first is efforts to develop musicians based on the theme of “development of music culture.” In order to support the dreams of young musicians who will make up the music community in future, the Foundation is working to improve the learning environment in a variety of ways such as providing scholarships to students aspiring to become musicians, holding Scholarship Concerts where the scholarship students perform, holding the Kyoto International Music Students Festival where renowned music schools from around the world are invited to Kyoto to perform with Japanese music schools and conducting seminars for developing professional musicians.In addition, musicians involved in such development activities have joined as colleagues delivering music to many people as “Rohm Music Friends” (4,363 as of July 2020). Rohm Music Friends are active in Japan and overseas, and some perform on the front line such as Daishin Kashimoto serving as first concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker and Dai Miyata becoming the first Japanese person to win the grand prix in the Rostropovich Cello Competition.

The second is efforts to spread music among the general public based on the theme of “promotion of music culture.” The Foundation contributes to building a better society by holding and supporting many concerts to make music more familiar for people. Support includes the New National Theatre, Tokyo Opera Appreciation Educational Programme for High School Students enabling high school students to experience a real opera performance, and the Japan Phil Kobaken World bringing people in contact with classical music enjoyably navigated by conductor Kenichiro Kobayashi.In addition, ROHM Music Festival including concerts ranging from solo to ensemble and orchestra performances enables Rohm Music Friends to gather in Kyoto from around the world to perform together and deliver wonderful music to audiences. This ROHM Music Festival is held in ROHM Theatre Kyoto, which was launched in 2016. ROHM Theatre Kyoto is located in the central part of Kyoto’s leading cultural area filled with historical shrines and museums, and along with the theater complex enabling world-renowned performances to be held, it includes bookstore/cafe and a restaurant. Approximately 9.88 million people have visited during the period since it was opened in 2016 until fiscal 2019, and it has become relaxing haven for people.