Koki Nakano piano

He is a piano virtuoso who is characterised by two things that make him stand out from his colleagues. Firstly, the close interconnection of music with body language and visuality in general. And secondly, the thoughtful, one might even say philosophical overlap of each of his works.

Koki Nakano was born in 1988 in Fukuoka, Japan. After graduating from Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, he enrolled in the composition department of Tokyo University of the Arts. He has performed in recitals at such prestigious locations as the Louvre and Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Cadogan Hall in London, and Lincoln Center in New York. He released his first album Lift in 2016 in collaboration with French cellist Vincent Segal on the French label Nø Førmat!.

In 2019, Koki Nakano participated in a research workshop at the Reborn Art Festival in the Ishinomaki Bay area. Accompanied by renowned visual artist Kohei Nawa, celebrated choreographer Damien Jalet, and several dancers, he explored various possibilities of fusion between the human body and the landscape. His second album , Pre-choreographed, was released in April 2020. Koki mixed his classical piano parts with the sounds of electronics, and for the first time in the whole project he significantly developed the relationship between dance and music. A year later, he composed the original music for Damien Jalet’s choreography Brise-lames, which was performed live with a dozen dancers for the season’s opening gala at the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris.

A third album, Oceanic Feeling, was released in 2022 alongside four video works by choreographers and dancers Tess Voelker, Nicolas Huchard, Marion Motin and Mourad Bouayad. The album’s title is borrowed from an expression used by French writer and musician Romain Rolland in a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, when he described his feeling of the ocean as “a feeling of eternity, a feeling of oneness with the outside world as a whole”.

Koki Nakano’s most recent album to date, Ululō, was released in October 2024 in collaboration with singer Yael Naim and singers Wayne Snow and Jordy. In his own words, on this album he reflects a state of mind based on typical Japanese education and local culture, for which, while there is a clear distinction between good and evil, there is also a middle ground that does not belong to either extreme. At the opening concert of the Jazz & World Music series, we will witness how Koki Nakano will convey this Eastern philosophy through the keyboard.

When and how on sale?

You can buy the concert as a part of the of the subscription Jazz & World Music till the first concert of the series.
You can also purchase the concert separately or as a part of a special package called “TAILOR-MADE SEASON at any time during the season.

Enjoy listening to:

Koki Nakano www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGvYXe9vHac