Joe Hisaishi in London

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.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is a British symphony orchestra founded in London by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1946. It performs the classical symphonic repertoire and is also known for Louis Clark’s Hooked on Classics recordings and albums featuring orchestral arrangements around archival vocals by Elvis Presley. Sir Thomas Beecham conducted the orchestra’s first concert at the Davis Theatre in Croydon in 1946. In 2004 it became the resident orchestra at Cadogan Hall, where it presents its own concert series, while larger programmes have taken it to the Royal Albert Hall. Most of its performances take place in the United Kingdom, and overseas tours have included concerts in the United States, Japan and China.