Joe Hisaishi in Amsterdam

Joe Hisaishi is a Japanese composer, conductor and pianist born in 1950, best known for his scores to Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films. His work includes the music for Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. He has also maintained a long collaboration with filmmaker Takeshi Kitano, scoring films including Sonatine and Hana-bi. In 2008, Joe Hisaishi presented Joe Hisaishi in Budokan: 25 Years with the Animations of Hayao Miyazaki at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, conducting an orchestral and choral program drawn from their films. He later took Joe Hisaishi Symphonic Concert: Music from the Studio Ghibli Films of Hayao Miyazaki to international stages, conducting and performing at the piano during a 2022 run at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is a Dutch symphony orchestra founded in Amsterdam in 1888. Its musical identity is closely tied to Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss: both composers conducted the ensemble, and Strauss dedicated Ein Heldenleben to Willem Mengelberg and the orchestra. Its recorded legacy also includes major Bruckner and Mahler cycles under Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Chailly and Mariss Jansons. The orchestra gave its first concert at the Concertgebouw in 1888 under Willem Kes. Mengelberg later led the 1920 Mahler Festival, which surveyed the composer’s music, and in 1975 the ensemble began its annual Christmas Matinee. International tours have repeatedly brought the orchestra to New York’s Carnegie Hall and the Berliner Philharmonie in Berlin.