Kaito Nakahori

Born in Chiba, Japan in 1989, Kaito Nakahori began composing at the age of 14. Drawing deeply from both Japanese Gagaku music and Western avant-garde music, he has developed a distinctive musical language that focuses on the multilayered resonance contained within a single tone and has advocated the concepts of “Space-Time Music” and “Timeless Music.” He currently resides and works in both New York and Tokyo and serves as the general director of Mito International Music Festival. In 2015, he held a portrait concert at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, where he conducted his own works including Summit of Mt. Fuji. Since then, he has received international recognition through major commissions such as Hotarubi (Goethe-Institut, 2017), Samon (Kyoto Art Center, 2018), Two Different Paintings (Tokyo Bunka Kaikan commission for the 150th Anniversary of Japan–Hungary Relations, 2019), the Theater Opera Zero (Toyooka Theater Festival commission, 2020), the 3D-audio opera Countless Wells (Fondation Royaumont commission with co-production IRCAM, 2021), Abyss (commissioned by the Takefu International Music Festival and dedicated to the Arditti Quartet, 2022), and the Gagaku suite Seisō (Stalight and Frost) (Naoyuki MANABE GAGAKU Ensemble commission, 2023–2025). In 2025, The Star Has No Sound - Clockwork Universe -, a Theater Opera co-produced by the Toyooka Theater Festival, Setouchi Art Triennale, and Mito International Music Festival (script by Oriza Hirata; music by Kaito Nakahori; 3D-audio co-production with YAMAHA Corporation). The production proposed a new form of interdisciplinary total art, while connecting different festivals through a single art project. As artistic director, he also expanded his activities through the festival’s Directors Program, including the site-specific outdoor performance Starlight Passage and Soundscape Garden presented across the entire Kairakuen garden, one of Japan’s Three Great Gardens. Nakahori is a recipient of the Brian M. Israel Prize and First Prize at the Impronta Ensemble Composition Competition. He has given lectures at the Japan Cultural Institute in Rome, the National University of Colombia, Tokyo College of Music, Hiroshima City University, and other institutions, while continuing to pursue interdisciplinary creation across diverse fields. In 2016, his music for Yin-Yu Huang’s film After Spring, the Tamaki Family… was nominated for the Taipei Film Awards and screened at festivals worldwide. In 2017, he released the electronic music album Mythologies on the French label IKKI.