Japanese pianist, Koki Nakano releases his highly anticipated new EP, “Soft Sculptures” today, hot off the heels from his second in collaboration with Issey Miyake for their Spring/Summer 2023 collections. He was first invited by the designer Satoshi Kondo-san to perform for the first collection since the death of its founder at the age of 84 in August 2022. The title of the track refers to the sublime sculpture that stood in tribute to the late designer during the show.

This Friday and Saturday, 27th and 28th January 2023, Nakano will perform in concert at the Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris, presenting his album Oceanic Feeling where he combines piano and electronic music, and explores the fragile balance of life. Always sensitive to the relationship between music and movement, he will have at his side the choreographer and dancer Nicolas Huchard who has worked with, among others, Christine and the Queens and Aya Nakamura, and not forgetting Madonna, whose Madame X tour he co-signed.   

Nakano has a long-standing strong relationship with the world of dance, in 2019 he collaborated with renowned visual artist Kohei Nawa, famous choreographer Damien Jalet and a group of dancers to explore different points of fusion between the human body and the landscape. The project was then followed by Nakano’s second album, Pre-choreographed, where he continued his collaboration with dancers to further explore this universe, “There’s no sound without movement, there’s no movement without sound. The two are inseparable,” says Nakano, who composed much of Oceanic Feeling while watching dancers move to what he played in the Parisian artist residence he inhabited. “Sometimes the dancers would tell me I was going too fast and that they couldn’t move their bodies like that, and so I would adapt the music. I don’t want the music to become disconnected from the human body,”says Nakano.

Watch the full performance at the Issey Miyake show at isseymiyake.com

Follow the link to – Maison de la culture du Japon – to get tickets for the concert. 

EP Artwork by Natsumi Toyama

Image courtesy of Issey Miyake by Olivier Baco.