Kent Nagano is nothing if not a very busy man. The musical director of the Los Angeles Opera, the artistic director and chief conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, Berlin, and the guest director of many world-famous orchestras, the California native is in demand as one of the most popular opera and symphonic conductors currently on the music circuit, and a champion of contemporary music.
This month, Nagano is in Tokyo for a series of concerts, displaying his usual flair for intriguing programming with works by Mendelssohn, Bruckner and the late Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), with whom he had a great musical relationship.
Nagano chose to perform five works by Takemitsu while in Tokyo, including "November Steps," "Requiem," "Family Tree," "Stanza 1" and "My Way of Life," "because I knew from our conversations together that these works were somehow special to him," he said in a recent interview with The Japan Times.