Yoko Kanno live Manhattan 2026-04-11 (Piano Me) photos
Hi folks! The concert was amazing. For me it was one of the best concerts ever. I'm still thinking about it now and feeling happy - and just lucky that I got to attend.
Some fans I chatted with ahead of time didn't know exactly what to expect. It turned out to be a career-spanning night of Yoko Kanno's music from many different anime shows (and games!), featuring YK on piano, with the Seatbelts joining on certain songs, and vocal performances by Scott Matthew, Steve Conte, and a choir of gospel singers.
It was different from the Seatbelts show in Brooklyn the night before (which didn't have Scott Matthew, nor the gospel singers, but had a whole brass section join the band). So I'd say that the Seatbelts show had more wild-sounding "big band" numbers (TANK!, Rush, What Planet Is This...), whereas the Piano Me show had more emotional & soulful numbers (The Singing Sea, Is It Real?, Ave Maria...). Both setlists were very different, but with a few of the bigger vocal songs appearing in both sets near the end: Rain, Call Me, Knock, Blue, Space Lion... and the Real Folk sing-along IIRC.
Many songs in Piano Me were not Bebop tracks. A lot of it is fuzzy to me now but I'll say that there were several songs from Kids On The Slope (awesome!), and my favorite moment of the entire show was near the beginning - after YK came out, she noodled on the piano for a minute (hinting at some well-known Bebop themes) - and then she gently started playing the music she wrote for an old Super NES game that I played constantly as a kid - "Uncharted Waters" (航海時代) !! This is something that I thought I'd never witness in my life - and it happened. I got emotional in the moment, thinking about how amazing it is that I could be in that room, with this amazing composer, all these years later, celebrating music that I've enjoyed so much throughout my life...
The performances were amazing, the sound in the venue was great, the vibe was electric, and the setlist was full of deep cuts for fans. I always dreamed that a concert like this might happen someday.. and it actually did!!!! I hope we get a lot more gigs like this in the future, and hope that she tours around too. Peace!