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LIVE With Joe Hisaishi & Hayao Miyazaki

Joe Hisaishi Symphonic Concert: 5-Day Concert With Radio City Music Hall this coming summer weekend in New York.

Joe Hisaishi with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra 2020. Music Press Asia

Image credit: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Beginning this weekend, Joe Hisaishi Symphonic Concert will be performing Music From Films of Hayao Miyazaki at the Radio City Music Hall in New York. The four-night concert if sold out will see a total of over 3,000 attendees enjoy music composed for the films made by Hayao Miyazaki.

Hisaishi is now a Japanese composer and musical director known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981.

Confirmed concert dates from August 2022 to June 2023 as below.

13, 15, 16, 17 & 18 Aug: Radio City Music Hall, New York, USA.
24 Sept: The Symphony Hall, Osaka, Japan.
11 Oct: Zenith de Nantes, Saint Herblain, France.
12 Oct: Arkea Arena (formerly Bordeaux Metropole Arena), Floirac, France.
26 & 27 Oct: Kioi Hall, Tokyo, Japan.
2 & 3 June, 2023: Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden.

Ticketing information via Viagogo, here.


Miyazaki met Hisaishi while working on a film adaptation following the success of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Known as an experimental and minimalist musician then, Joe Hisaishi composed the film’s score, which was released in March 1984.

Hisaishi has been associated with animator Hayao Miyazaki since then, having written scores for all but one of Miyazaki’s films. Today, their collaboration has been compared to that of director Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams.

Listen to Hisaishi’s symphonic poem “NAUSICAÄ” (from “NAUSICAÄ of the Valley of the Wind”) below.

As recently as February 2020, Joe Hisaishi released the album Dream Songs: The Essential Joe Hisaishi with Decca Gold. Its album captured twenty-eight compositions from some of Hisaishi’s career.

One Summer’s Day, the opening theme song written for Miyazaki’s animated film Spirited Away (2001), saw over 30 million streams on Spotify alone as of July 2022.

In 2013, he composed the score for the NHK wildlife documentary Legends of the Deep: Giant Squid (世界初撮影! 深海の超巨大イカ), narrated by David Attenborough, for BBC’s Natural World special Giant Squid: Filming the Impossible.

In 1986, he scored Laputa: Castle in the Sky for Miyazaki’s newly established Studio Ghibli; then in the 1990s, scored the Ghibli films — Porco Rosso and Princess Mononoke.

Listen to Miyazaki’s animation Spirited Away Original Soundtrack below.

[One Summer’s Day, the opening theme song written for Miyazaki’s animated film Spirited Away (2001), saw over 30 million streams on Spotify alone as of July 2022.]

In the 1970s, Hisaishi’s compositions were influenced by Japanese popular music, electronic music and New Age music, and by the Japanese electronic band Yellow Magic Orchestra.

He developed his music from minimalist ideas and expanded toward orchestral work. Around 1975, he presented his first public performance. His first album, MKWAJU, was released in 1981; his second, the electropop-minimalist Information, was released a year later.

Hisaishi’s compositions (including eight theatrical films and one OVA) become well-known as a style associated with early anime. As a student of anime composer Takeo Watanabe, his first major anime scores were for Hajime Ningen Gyatoruz (1974) and Robokko Beeton (1976).

He is also recognized for his music for filmmaker ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano, including A Scene at the Sea (1991), Sonatine (1993), Kids Return (1996), Hana-bi (1997), Kikujiro (1999), Brother and Dolls (2002), and for the video game series Ni no Kuni.

Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, director, author, and also co-founder of Studio Ghibli. Founded in 1985, the animation company saw the birth of Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), and Porco Rosso (1992). Their commercial successes did not only happen in Japan but have gained worldwide recognition.

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