I immediately sent a message introducing The Kyoto Connection and explaining that we would be in Kyoto in September. I asked if they might be interested in having us play live music for one of their sessions, and the answer came back very quickly: yes.

That is how I got in touch with Kanami, the teacher behind CI Brisa Kyoto, an artist involved in Contact Improvisation, aerial dance, theater and other performing arts in Kyoto. We exchanged a few messages before our arrival, and she gave us some general ideas about the dynamics of the class and the kind of experience they were looking for.

On September 24 at 7 PM, we arrived at a community center in Kyoto with our instruments, ready to play.

We were also a little nervous.

We have improvised live many times before, but we had never created music continuously for a Contact Improvisation session. We didn’t really know what was going to happen, which also meant that we had to pay attention to the room, the dancers and whatever was developing in front of us.

The group itself was wonderfully diverse, with people from Japan and several other countries, including France, Germany and Thailand. We began the session by creating a very deep and minimal atmosphere, combining field recordings and sounds from Kyoto with long, ethereal textures, synthesizers and Jesica’s violin.

For a while, the music remained introspective and spacious as the dancers slowly began moving and interacting with each other.

And then Cielo joined the class.

Little by little, she started moving around the room, interacting with the dancers and with Kanami. They began playing with her and she began playing with them. The energy of the entire room started to change, and naturally, our music changed with it.

What had begun as something deep and meditative gradually became playful, joyful and sometimes even funny. We weren’t following a plan anymore. We were simply watching what was happening and responding through music.

Jesica started singing and eventually left her violin for a while and joined the dance herself. At another point, one of the participants, Michiru, decided to sing while I was playing the Tenori-on, and suddenly we found ourselves doing an improvised duet in the middle of the session.

Everything became part of the same game.

For an entire hour we played continuously without stopping, improvising every second of the music according to what was happening in the room. For us, it was a beautiful musical exercise: listening, reacting, changing direction and allowing the dancers to influence what we played just as much as our music influenced their movements.

By the end of the session, the nervousness we had felt when we arrived had completely disappeared. We left energized, happy and grateful for having been invited into an artistic practice that was new to us.

One of the things we are enjoying most about this tour is precisely this possibility of taking our music outside the places where we would normally expect to find it. Not only concerts and stages, but cafés, community spaces, dance classes and encounters with artists whose disciplines are completely different from ours.

Thank you to Kanami and everyone at CI Brisa Kyoto for welcoming us, playing with us and giving us the opportunity to be the live soundtrack for your Contact Improvisation session.

It was our first time doing something like this.

Hopefully, it won’t be the last.

This was an important day for us, and one that will probably stay in our hearts forever: Café Frosch was the first place where The Kyoto Connection ever performed live for an audience in Kyoto.

We arrived around noon, just as some people were coming in for lunch. Sumi and the whole Café Frosch team welcomed us warmly and showed us the space where we could set up our instruments. It felt almost like playing in someone’s living room: a cozy space filled with vintage objects, books and little treasures from different parts of the world. From the moment we arrived, we felt that Café Frosch was a place with a lot of soul.

At 12:30 we started playing for a small but incredibly receptive audience who listened to us with great attention and warmth.

We played songs from The Kyoto Connection, Jesica sang some songs from her own repertoire, and we also left some room for improvisation and play. Cielo joined in too, dancing while we played. For about forty minutes, the three of us shared this little musical world we have brought with us from Argentina to Japan.

We recorded the entire performance, and the full concert is available on our YouTube channel. Watching it now feels particularly special because it captures the first time our music was played live in the city that has inspired this project for so many years.

The concert was also a great opportunity to continue developing our traveling live setup. During these weeks in Kyoto we are moving from place to place with a very simple configuration: violin, synthesizer and Jesica’s voice. Everything has to fit into what we can carry ourselves, be quick to set up and allow us to play in very different kinds of spaces. Café Frosch was a perfect place to put that idea into practice.

After the concert, we packed everything away and stayed for lunch. We had a delicious meal and tried different flavors, and Jesica particularly fell in love with the affogato. Cielo, meanwhile, decided it was the perfect moment for a little nap.

When she woke up, we crossed the street to Shōran Park, the small neighborhood park directly in front of the café, and spent almost an hour there playing with her.

And, as often happens when walking around Kyoto without any particular plan, we found another little surprise nearby: an old confectionery where an elderly man makes some of the most delicious cookies we have tasted in Japan. We bought some and, of course, they didn’t last very long.

It was a simple afternoon, but also one of those days that perfectly explains why this trip means so much to us. We came to Café Frosch to play a concert, but ended up spending the afternoon eating, talking, playing with Cielo in a neighborhood park and discovering another small corner of Kyoto.

Thank you, Sumi, and everyone at Café Frosch for opening the doors of your café to us and giving The Kyoto Connection a place for our very first live performance in Kyoto.

After more than twenty years making music inspired by this city from the other side of the world, being able to finally play it here, in front of an audience, was something very special for us.

We are sure our paths will cross again.

A few months ago, while looking for information about Kawamata, the town in Fukushima where Cosquín en Japón takes place and where Jesica will be performing during this tour, I came across an album called “Ambient Kawamata” by Ritsuko Matsumoto, a Japanese marimba player who had dedicated an entire record to the sounds, landscapes and culture of that place.

The album immediately caught my attention, so I decided to write to her. I told her that we were traveling to Japan, that we would be spending a few days in Kawamata, and that I would love for us to meet and perhaps make some music together.

A few days later, I received her reply. Ritsuko told me that Kawamata was her grandparents’ hometown and was now based in Sagamihara. Still, she was excited about the idea of meeting, and that was the beginning of an exchange of emails that continued for several months. Little by little, we shared music, stories and ideas about things we could do together during our trip.

Finally, on September 20, the day came for us to meet in person.

Ritsuko met us at the station and took us to her home, where her husband and her daughter Rin were waiting for us. They had prepared a delicious Japanese lunch, and after eating and talking for a while, we went into her studio to do what we had been imagining for months: play music together.

We really didn’t need to plan much. We simply started playing, and for most of the afternoon we freely improvised with her marimba, Jesica’s violin and my piano. We tried ideas, listened to each other, changed directions and started again. We hardly spoke while we were playing because, somehow, we didn’t need to.

Meanwhile, Cielo was playing with Rin in the living room, and every now and then we could hear their laughter coming into the studio. It was one of those afternoons when something you have imagined for months finally happens and, fortunately, turns out to be even more beautiful than you expected.

After spending the day at her home, Ritsuko took us to the Hikari to Midori no Bijutsukan museum (Museum of the light and green) where we will perform together on October 17. There we met her friend Nagata, who has been instrumental in making this encounter possible, as well as the director of the museum. We spent some time talking about music, art and ideas for the performance, which will have a special meaning for us because it will be our final concert before returning to Argentina.

For our second day together, we had planned something completely different: taking our instruments to a park and having a kind of outdoor musical picnic. But Typhoon Dujuan changed our plans and, with the recommendation to stay indoors, Ritsuko invited us back to her home.

So after midday we returned to her studio and simply continued where we had left off the day before.

This time, we also decided to record some of what happened. For more than two hours we improvised and played with the instruments, with the sounds that appeared in the moment, and even with Cielo’s voice, which eventually became part of the music. From that session, we recorded a unique twenty-minute piece in both audio and video that we hope to share very soon.

When we finished, Ritsuko and her family invited us to dinner. We had sushi, miso soup and several other Japanese dishes that we enjoyed discovering around the table. We had also brought a few things from Argentina, so they got to try mate and alfajores. By the end of it, we had spent two full days together sharing food, conversations, music and family life.

Something about this whole story that I especially like:

A few months ago, I was in Buenos Aires looking for information about a small town in Fukushima when I accidentally discovered an album that made me curious. I sent an email without really knowing what would come of it, and that email eventually brought us to Ritsuko’s home, where we met her family, improvised together for hours and began preparing a concert at a museum in Sagamihara.

I guess this is also why we make these trips.

Beyond the concerts, the places we want to visit and all the plans we can make in advance, traveling with music as our excuse allows us to meet people we probably would never have met otherwise.

Thank you, Ritsuko, and your beautiful family for opening the doors of your home to us and making us feel so welcome.

We leave Sagamihara with happy hearts and full of energy to continue this tour, meeting people and making music along the way.

As an artist, that’s the only question that prevents my creative decisions from becoming noise in a world already full of everything.

Twenty years ago, I started The Kyoto Connection, a musical project inspired by a city that I had never visited. Over the years, Kyoto became much more than a place. It became a source of inspiration, friendship, and unexpected connections with people from around the world.

This september, that story continues. Together with Cafe Monogataru, we are delighted to host the very first edition of K-CONNECTION in Yamashina!

We imagine it as a small and welcoming gathering where artists can share their work, their stories, and the many different ways Kyoto has touched their lives.

We don’t want this to feel like a traditional performance. We hope it becomes a space where conversations begin, collaborations are born, and strangers leave feeling they have known each other for years. Whether you come to perform or simply to listen, we would love to welcome you!

Event Information

Date: Sunday, September 27 2026 – 4:00 PM
Venue: Cafe Monogataru. 11-1 Misasagi-Hirabayashi-cho, Yamashina-ku, Kyoto City (If the location is difficult to find on Google Maps, please search using the parking lot address:27-4 Anshu-Okunoda, Yamashina-ku, Kyoto City)

Open Call for Artists

¡We are currently inviting artists to participate! Each selected artist will have approximately 15 minutes to share their work.

We welcome proposals in music, poetry, storytelling, photography, painting, dance, and every other form of creative expression.

Because the venue is intentionally small and intimate, not every application can be accepted. Apply here.

Several cities and events are already confirmed, but we’re still excited to discover new places, meet new people, and embrace whatever experiences this journey may bring.

We’ll be sharing all the latest updates here and on*thekyotoconnection.com

See you in Japan!

There, I recorded the gentle sound of water flowing through the garden. I never learned exactly where that water came from—perhaps from a distant mountain stream, perhaps from the imagination itself—but its voice stayed with me long after we left.

With that sound and the emotions the garden awakened in me, I composed When in Murin-an, a piano piece in three movements: Solitude, Inspiration, and Encounter. These are the three feelings I experienced while sitting in that extraordinary place, and the ones I hope to express through this music.

Murin-an is one of Kyoto’s most celebrated gardens, created at the end of the 19th century as the residence of statesman and visionary Aritomo Yamagata. Considered a masterpiece of modern Japanese garden design, it remains a place where nature, silence, and contemplation meet in perfect harmony.

This track is an attempt to translate that feeling into music

It was there where I could clearly hear that subtle inner voice that has been calling me to create this music for the past 20 years.

During my visit, I recorded the surrounding soundscape — the atmosphere, the silence, the presence — and also the gong that stands just in front of the temple gate. With those sounds, I later composed this piece as a way to return to that moment, to that whisper.

“Whispers of Bishamondo” is now available on all streaming platforms.

I truly hope it finds you, and that you enjoy it.

This time I’m arriving with some cool projects: hosting a multicultural event in Kyoto, recording a new album in Yamashina, and continuing to meet great people along the way.

I’ll also be available for performances and festivals en Kyoto and Tokyo—if anything comes to mind, I’d love to hear from you