Japan Tour ’26 Chapter 5: “Masafumi Komatsu”
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One of the things we hoped would happen during this trip was to meet artists in Kyoto with whom we could create new connections and, hopefully, make music. Sometimes those connections develop faster than expected.
We met pianist, composer and Kyoto Tachibana University professor Masafumi Komatsu at K-Connection, the event we organized at Café Monogataru in Yamashina. Masafumi participated in the event as one of the artists, and only a few days later, on Thursday, October 1, he invited us to spend an afternoon with him at the university.
He welcomed Jesica, Cielo and me into a large music and arts room where a beautiful Yamaha grand piano was waiting for us.
From there, there wasn’t really a plan. We simply started making music.
Masafumi and I played pieces for each other, improvised together and spent quite some time exploring the piano four hands. We talked about music, exchanged ideas, laughed and continued playing. Meanwhile, Cielo made herself completely at home in the room, filling the blackboard with drawings and eventually getting all of us to dance with her.
There was also something very special about the piano we were playing.
Next to it, we found photographs and a small plaque telling the story of Rie Yamamoto, a four-year-old girl who loved to sing. Rie died in a traffic accident when she was only four years old, and her family later donated the piano in her memory.
The plaque, dated October 23, 2011, explains that Rie had a lovely singing voice and expresses the hope that her pure spirit will continue to resonate forever.
Learning this while we were there gave the instrument another meaning. A piano is already an object designed to resonate, but knowing that this particular one had been donated so that music could continue to be made in the memory of a little girl who loved to sing made playing it especially moving. Fifteen years later, that piano is still being played, bringing people together and filling a room with music.
At one point during the afternoon, Jesica picked up her violin, Masafumi sat down at the Yamaha and I joined them with synthesizers and soundscapes recorded around Kyoto.
We didn’t discuss what we were going to play. We simply started.
What followed was a completely improvised piece, with Masafumi on piano, Jesica on violin and voice, and me adding synthesizers and sounds from the city around us. We recorded the whole performance, and the complete video is included with this chronicle.
I particularly like that the sounds of Kyoto became part of an improvisation created there, in Yamashina. The city wasn’t only the place where we were playing; in a small way, it became another instrument in the room.
The rest of the afternoon continued in the same spirit. We played, listened to each other, experimented, talked and laughed. There was something very natural about making music together, despite having met only a few days earlier.
For me, this afternoon was also a beautiful continuation of what had happened at K-Connection. One of the reasons for organizing that event was to create opportunities for artists who love Kyoto to meet each other and see what might grow from those encounters. Four days later, we were already sitting together around a piano at Kyoto Tachibana University, improvising and recording new music.
And that is exactly the kind of connection we hoped to create.
I’m deeply grateful to Masafumi for inviting us into the university, for sharing his music with us and for welcoming our family with such generosity.
We left that afternoon with a recording, many beautiful memories and several ideas for things we might do together in the future.
I have a feeling this was only the beginning of our musical friendship.
