Through its large windows, I could see groups of elderly people sitting together, sometimes talking, sometimes participating in activities. I always wondered what kind of place it was, but for some reason, I never stopped to find out.

This year, during one of our walks around Yamashina, I finally decided to take a closer look. I discovered that the building was the Hinooka Day Service Center, a place where elderly people spend part of their day receiving care, participating in activities and enjoying time together.

And immediately, an idea came to mind: what if we offered to play a little concert for them before leaving Kyoto?

We found an email address and wrote to the center, introducing The Kyoto Connection and explaining that we were musicians from Argentina visiting Japan. We told them that we would love to share some music with the people attending the center, simply as a way of giving something back to a neighborhood that has given us so much.

To our delight, they accepted our proposal.

On October 7, Cielo and I arrived at Hinooka Day Service Center with our instruments, ready to perform a small concert of about thirty minutes.

But we were completely unprepared for the welcome we received.

As we entered the room, the residents and staff were waiting for us, waving little Argentinian flags they had prepared especially for our visit. It was such a thoughtful and unexpected gesture that we immediately felt at home.

We set up our instruments and began playing for an audience that listened with incredible attention, warmth and affection. Cielo joined me throughout the performance, and her presence brought a special kind of joy to the room. We shared our music, exchanged smiles and enjoyed one of the most intimate and rewarding performances of our entire tour.

There was something particularly moving about recognizing some of the people I had seen through those windows so many times before. For more than a year, I had walked past that building wondering about the lives of the people inside. Now we were sitting together, sharing music, without needing to speak the same language.

And for the first time, we were on the other side of that window.

After the concert, we had the opportunity to spend a little time with the residents and staff, who continued to make us feel incredibly welcome.

Later, Nomura-san, who had helped us organize the visit, sent me a beautiful message. She told me that both the residents and the staff had become so absorbed in the music that they had completely lost track of time. She also mentioned how much Cielo’s presence had contributed to the warm atmosphere of the afternoon.

I don’t think we could have received a more meaningful compliment.

Throughout this tour, we have performed in cafés, cultural venues, museums, universities and artistic gatherings. Each experience has been different, and each has taught us something about the many ways music can bring people together.

But this small concert at Hinooka Day Service Center reminded me of something particularly important: music doesn’t always need a stage, a large audience or a special occasion. Sometimes all it takes is a room, a few instruments and the willingness to share something with others.

For me, this experience also had a very personal meaning. Yamashina has become one of my favorite places in Kyoto, a neighborhood where I feel an increasingly strong sense of belonging. Being able to offer something to the people who live here, even something as simple as thirty minutes of music, was a wonderful way to express my gratitude.

As our time in Kyoto was coming to an end, this afternoon felt like a particularly beautiful farewell.

I want to sincerely thank Nomura-san and everyone at Hinooka Day Service Center for welcoming us with such kindness, for preparing those wonderful Argentinian flags and for allowing us to share our music with the residents.

And, of course, thank you to everyone who listened, smiled and made us feel that our little concert was something special.

We came to Kyoto to make music, meet people and strengthen our connection with this city. Experiences like this have given that connection a meaning far beyond anything we could have imagined.

We will never forget the afternoon we spent on the other side of that window.

A few months before traveling to Japan, I had come across a call for speakers for PechaKucha Night Kyoto on Facebook. I noticed that the event coincided with our stay in the city and immediately started thinking about how we could participate.

PechaKucha is a presentation format in which each speaker shares 20 images, with each image displayed for exactly 20 seconds, making a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Instead of proposing a traditional talk, I thought it would be interesting to tell the story of The Kyoto Connection through a live musical performance, while 20 photographs on the screen illustrated our journey.

We called our presentation “The Kyoto Connection — A Dream 21 Years in the Making.”

The idea was to share how a musical project that began in Argentina more than twenty years ago, inspired by our love for Kyoto, had eventually brought us all the way to Japan to perform our music in the very city that inspired it.

That Saturday evening, Jesica, Cielo and I arrived at UrBANGUILD, a well-known venue in Kyoto’s independent music and arts scene. We set up our instruments, did our soundcheck and prepared everything for the performance.

Being there was already exciting for me. After so many years following Kyoto’s music and art scene from the other side of the world, I was finally getting the opportunity to perform on a stage that has hosted so many interesting artists and creative projects.

Our turn came around the middle of the evening, just after the break.

We began with a live improvisation, combining synthesizers, violin and atmospheric sounds while the photographs started telling our story on the screen. After a few minutes, we transitioned into “Setsuko’s Smile,” one of our compositions, which accompanied the remaining images until the end of our six-minute-and-forty-second presentation.

But perhaps the most beautiful part of the whole experience was something we hadn’t planned at all: Cielo danced throughout the entire performance.

While we played and the photographs moved across the screen, she danced freely beside us, becoming part of the presentation in her own way. Watching her enjoy the music and the stage so naturally made the experience even more meaningful for us.

In a way, it was a perfect representation of what The Kyoto Connection has become over the years. What started as a personal musical dream is now something we share as a family, and having Jesica and Cielo there with me made that moment particularly special.

After our presentation, we stayed to enjoy the rest of the event and talk with some of the people in the audience. Several attendees approached us to say how much they had enjoyed the music and how strongly they connected with our story and our relationship with Kyoto.

Those conversations meant a lot to us. For more than twenty years, we have been creating music inspired by this city, often from thousands of kilometers away, without really knowing how people in Kyoto might receive it. Being able to share that story in person and discover that it resonated with others was a wonderful experience.

This evening was another reminder of how many unexpected opportunities this journey has given us. A simple Facebook post that I discovered months earlier had eventually brought us to one of Kyoto’s most interesting cultural venues, where we could share our music, our story and our love for this city.

We want to express our deepest gratitude to the entire PechaKucha Night Kyoto team for welcoming us with so much warmth, kindness and generosity, and for giving us the opportunity to be part of such a wonderful evening.

Performing at UrBANGUILD, sharing our story through music and seeing Cielo dancing onstage while the images of our journey appeared behind us is something we will always treasure.

It was a night that will remain in our hearts forever.

I first heard about Sayo Teranishi, a soprano singer from Yamashina, through Etsuko, the owner of Café Monogataru. Etsuko told me that she had invited Sayo to participate in K-Connection, the artistic gathering we were organizing at her café, and that Sayo had accepted.

A few days later, Sayo and I began exchanging emails to coordinate her participation and discuss what she would need for her performance. We finally met in person on September 27, during K-Connection at Café Monogataru.

Sayo performed two songs that afternoon, and one of them was by Hibari Misora, one of Japan’s most beloved singers. This immediately caught my attention because I have been listening to Misora’s music for many years, and some of her songs have a very special place in my personal relationship with Japanese music.

After the event, Sayo’s son came over to introduce himself. He told me that he and his mother lived at and looked after a Buddhist temple in Yamashina called Amida-ji. Before leaving, he gave me his business card.

That same evening, I wrote to Sayo with an idea. I asked her if she would be interested in recording a version of “Kawa no Nagare no Yō ni” (Like the Flow of a River), one of my favorite songs by Hibari Misora, together at the temple.

She immediately said yes.

A few days later, on Saturday, October 3, I found myself arriving at Amida-ji with my small portable keyboard, ready to make music with Sayo.

It was a sunny and slightly hot afternoon in Yamashina. Sayo and her son welcomed me into their beautiful temple, where we prepared a simple setup to record our performance in audio and video.

We started with “Kawa no Nagare no Yō ni,” a song I have loved for a long time. Hearing Sayo’s wonderful soprano voice singing it while I accompanied her on the keyboard, inside a Japanese temple, was a very special experience for me. I had imagined playing music in a temple many times before coming to Japan, but I never imagined that my first opportunity would involve performing one of my favorite Japanese songs alongside such a talented singer.

After finishing that recording, we decided to play another song together: “The Rose,” made famous by Bette Midler. It was a beautiful contrast, moving from a classic Japanese song to an American ballad, with the same voice and piano bringing both pieces to life in that peaceful setting.

We spent some time talking with Sayo and her son about music and about how these encounters were creating unexpected bridges between Argentina and Japan. It was interesting to think that only a week earlier we had been strangers, and now we were sharing an afternoon recording music together in their family temple.

When we finished, Sayo and her son kindly invited me to explore Amida-ji and its gardens. I spent some time walking around, enjoying the atmosphere of the temple and appreciating the opportunity to discover another beautiful corner of Yamashina that I probably would never have visited otherwise.

This experience reminded me once again how much of this tour has been shaped by the people we have met along the way. Etsuko introduced me to Sayo through K-Connection, Sayo’s son told me about their temple, and a simple email turned into an afternoon of music that I will always remember.

I’m deeply grateful to Sayo Teranishi and her son for welcoming me into Amida-ji, sharing their music and their home with me, and helping me fulfill a dream I had carried with me to Japan.

We recorded both performances, and I’m very happy that we can now share these moments with everyone through our videos.

What started as an invitation to participate in a small artistic gathering became another beautiful musical friendship, and another connection between Argentina and Japan.

We met pianist, composer and Kyoto Tachibana University professor Masafumi Komatsu at K-Connection, the event we organized at Café Monogataru in Yamashina. Masafumi participated in the event as one of the artists, and only a few days later, on Thursday, October 1, he invited us to spend an afternoon with him at the university.

He welcomed Jesica, Cielo and me into a large music and arts room where a beautiful Yamaha grand piano was waiting for us.

From there, there wasn’t really a plan. We simply started making music.

Masafumi and I played pieces for each other, improvised together and spent quite some time exploring the piano four hands. We talked about music, exchanged ideas, laughed and continued playing. Meanwhile, Cielo made herself completely at home in the room, filling the blackboard with drawings and eventually getting all of us to dance with her.

There was also something very special about the piano we were playing.

Next to it, we found photographs and a small plaque telling the story of Rie Yamamoto, a four-year-old girl who loved to sing. Rie died in a traffic accident when she was only four years old, and her family later donated the piano in her memory.

The plaque, dated October 23, 2011, explains that Rie had a lovely singing voice and expresses the hope that her pure spirit will continue to resonate forever.

Learning this while we were there gave the instrument another meaning. A piano is already an object designed to resonate, but knowing that this particular one had been donated so that music could continue to be made in the memory of a little girl who loved to sing made playing it especially moving. Fifteen years later, that piano is still being played, bringing people together and filling a room with music.

At one point during the afternoon, Jesica picked up her violin, Masafumi sat down at the Yamaha and I joined them with synthesizers and soundscapes recorded around Kyoto.

We didn’t discuss what we were going to play. We simply started.

What followed was a completely improvised piece, with Masafumi on piano, Jesica on violin and voice, and me adding synthesizers and sounds from the city around us. We recorded the whole performance, and the complete video is included with this chronicle.

I particularly like that the sounds of Kyoto became part of an improvisation created there, in Yamashina. The city wasn’t only the place where we were playing; in a small way, it became another instrument in the room.

The rest of the afternoon continued in the same spirit. We played, listened to each other, experimented, talked and laughed. There was something very natural about making music together, despite having met only a few days earlier.

For me, this afternoon was also a beautiful continuation of what had happened at K-Connection. One of the reasons for organizing that event was to create opportunities for artists who love Kyoto to meet each other and see what might grow from those encounters. Four days later, we were already sitting together around a piano at Kyoto Tachibana University, improvising and recording new music.

And that is exactly the kind of connection we hoped to create.

I’m deeply grateful to Masafumi for inviting us into the university, for sharing his music with us and for welcoming our family with such generosity.

We left that afternoon with a recording, many beautiful memories and several ideas for things we might do together in the future.

I have a feeling this was only the beginning of our musical friendship.

We called it K-Connection, with a very simple idea behind it: Artists connected by their love for Kyoto.

On Sunday, September 27, that idea finally became real at Cafe Monogataru, a beautiful café surrounded by trees on the mountainside of Yamashina.

It had been raining heavily in Kyoto throughout the weekend, and Sunday afternoon was no exception. Because of the weather, I honestly didn’t know how many people would come. But shortly before 4 PM, people started arriving, and by the time we began, Cafe Monogataru was full. Around 50 people joined us throughout the afternoon, something that made us especially happy considering how much it was raining outside.

The event opened with Jesica Rubino singing “Soy.” It was a beautiful way to begin the afternoon, bringing a little piece of Argentine music to Yamashina through her voice.

The idea of K-Connection was not to organize a traditional concert, but to create a space where different kinds of artists could meet each other and share what they do. Each participant had around fifteen minutes and complete freedom to decide how to use them.

And that created a wonderfully diverse afternoon.

We had music, poetry, performance, improvisation and presentations of artistic and cultural projects. Olga came with the full Kyopella ensemble, filling the room with their voices. We heard Margriet Dabaie, soprano Sayo Teranishi, Satomi Murata, pianist Masafumi Komatsu, Butoh dancer Giulia Baranzoni, harmonica player Kuni, Claudia Chachi (Kintsugi), Kamau Abayomi (Poetry), each bringing something completely different to the afternoon.

For three hours, each person had their moment and everyone else listened. There was genuine curiosity about what the others were doing, and a very warm and generous atmosphere developed inside the café.

At around 7 PM, The Kyoto Connection took the stage to close the artistic part of the event.

Jesica, Cielo and I performed three songs: “Waterfall,” “True Grit” and “Vista Panorámica.” Once again, Cielo joined us onstage, and it felt particularly meaningful to close an event like this together as a family.

After our performance, I said a few words of thanks and invited everyone to stay for dinner. Many of us remained at Café Monogataru until around 9 PM, eating delicious pizza, talking and getting to know each other beyond those fifteen minutes onstage.

In many ways, I think that dinner was as important as the performances themselves.

One of the main reasons for creating K-Connection was simply to put people in the same room who might otherwise never meet. Watching everyone talking after the event, exchanging contacts and discovering connections between their different projects made me feel that the idea had worked. And in the days since then, I have already seen some of these artists continuing their conversations and interacting with each other.

I want to especially thank Etsuko Hirose, the owner of Café Monogataru, and her entire team for welcoming us with so much warmth, love and dedication. They gave us everything we needed: a beautiful space, sound equipment, a screen, instruments, food and, most importantly, the freedom to make the place our own for an afternoon.

I also want to thank every artist who joined this first edition. Everyone came with an incredible willingness to participate, listen, share and support each other. That spirit was present throughout the entire afternoon and was probably my favorite part of the experience.

And a very special thank you to Erika Yamao, who was by my side throughout the event, providing live interpretation while I hosted. Her help allowed me to communicate with everyone in the room and made it possible for the event to flow naturally between languages. I am deeply grateful for her generosity and support.

K-Connection also made me think differently about the meaning of The Kyoto Connection itself.

For more than twenty years, that name described our own connection with Kyoto: a musical project created thousands of kilometers away, in Argentina, inspired by a city we dreamed about for a very long time.

But perhaps the idea can now become something larger.

The connection with Kyoto doesn’t have to be only ours. It can belong to all the people who, for whatever reason, have developed a special relationship with this city and express that relationship through music, poetry, dance, visual arts, research or any other form of creativity.

Maybe that’s what K-Connection can become: a place where some of those connections meet.

Artists connected by their love for Kyoto.

This was the first one.

We really hope there will be many more.

I immediately sent a message introducing The Kyoto Connection and explaining that we would be in Kyoto in September. I asked if they might be interested in having us play live music for one of their sessions, and the answer came back very quickly: yes.

That is how I got in touch with Kanami, the teacher behind CI Brisa Kyoto, an artist involved in Contact Improvisation, aerial dance, theater and other performing arts in Kyoto. We exchanged a few messages before our arrival, and she gave us some general ideas about the dynamics of the class and the kind of experience they were looking for.

On September 24 at 7 PM, we arrived at a community center in Kyoto with our instruments, ready to play.

We were also a little nervous.

We have improvised live many times before, but we had never created music continuously for a Contact Improvisation session. We didn’t really know what was going to happen, which also meant that we had to pay attention to the room, the dancers and whatever was developing in front of us.

The group itself was wonderfully diverse, with people from Japan and several other countries, including France, Germany and Thailand. We began the session by creating a very deep and minimal atmosphere, combining field recordings and sounds from Kyoto with long, ethereal textures, synthesizers and Jesica’s violin.

For a while, the music remained introspective and spacious as the dancers slowly began moving and interacting with each other.

And then Cielo joined the class.

Little by little, she started moving around the room, interacting with the dancers and with Kanami. They began playing with her and she began playing with them. The energy of the entire room started to change, and naturally, our music changed with it.

What had begun as something deep and meditative gradually became playful, joyful and sometimes even funny. We weren’t following a plan anymore. We were simply watching what was happening and responding through music.

Jesica started singing and eventually left her violin for a while and joined the dance herself. At another point, one of the participants, Michiru, decided to sing while I was playing the Tenori-on, and suddenly we found ourselves doing an improvised duet in the middle of the session.

Everything became part of the same game.

For an entire hour we played continuously without stopping, improvising every second of the music according to what was happening in the room. For us, it was a beautiful musical exercise: listening, reacting, changing direction and allowing the dancers to influence what we played just as much as our music influenced their movements.

By the end of the session, the nervousness we had felt when we arrived had completely disappeared. We left energized, happy and grateful for having been invited into an artistic practice that was new to us.

One of the things we are enjoying most about this tour is precisely this possibility of taking our music outside the places where we would normally expect to find it. Not only concerts and stages, but cafés, community spaces, dance classes and encounters with artists whose disciplines are completely different from ours.

Thank you to Kanami and everyone at CI Brisa Kyoto for welcoming us, playing with us and giving us the opportunity to be the live soundtrack for your Contact Improvisation session.

It was our first time doing something like this.

Hopefully, it won’t be the last.

This was an important day for us, and one that will probably stay in our hearts forever: Café Frosch was the first place where The Kyoto Connection ever performed live for an audience in Kyoto.

We arrived around noon, just as some people were coming in for lunch. Sumi and the whole Café Frosch team welcomed us warmly and showed us the space where we could set up our instruments. It felt almost like playing in someone’s living room: a cozy space filled with vintage objects, books and little treasures from different parts of the world. From the moment we arrived, we felt that Café Frosch was a place with a lot of soul.

At 12:30 we started playing for a small but incredibly receptive audience who listened to us with great attention and warmth.

We played songs from The Kyoto Connection, Jesica sang some songs from her own repertoire, and we also left some room for improvisation and play. Cielo joined in too, dancing while we played. For about forty minutes, the three of us shared this little musical world we have brought with us from Argentina to Japan.

We recorded the entire performance, and the full concert is available on our YouTube channel. Watching it now feels particularly special because it captures the first time our music was played live in the city that has inspired this project for so many years.

The concert was also a great opportunity to continue developing our traveling live setup. During these weeks in Kyoto we are moving from place to place with a very simple configuration: violin, synthesizer and Jesica’s voice. Everything has to fit into what we can carry ourselves, be quick to set up and allow us to play in very different kinds of spaces. Café Frosch was a perfect place to put that idea into practice.

After the concert, we packed everything away and stayed for lunch. We had a delicious meal and tried different flavors, and Jesica particularly fell in love with the affogato. Cielo, meanwhile, decided it was the perfect moment for a little nap.

When she woke up, we crossed the street to Shōran Park, the small neighborhood park directly in front of the café, and spent almost an hour there playing with her.

And, as often happens when walking around Kyoto without any particular plan, we found another little surprise nearby: an old confectionery where an elderly man makes some of the most delicious cookies we have tasted in Japan. We bought some and, of course, they didn’t last very long.

It was a simple afternoon, but also one of those days that perfectly explains why this trip means so much to us. We came to Café Frosch to play a concert, but ended up spending the afternoon eating, talking, playing with Cielo in a neighborhood park and discovering another small corner of Kyoto.

Thank you, Sumi, and everyone at Café Frosch for opening the doors of your café to us and giving The Kyoto Connection a place for our very first live performance in Kyoto.

After more than twenty years making music inspired by this city from the other side of the world, being able to finally play it here, in front of an audience, was something very special for us.

We are sure our paths will cross again.

A few months ago, while looking for information about Kawamata, the town in Fukushima where Cosquín en Japón takes place and where Jesica will be performing during this tour, I came across an album called “Ambient Kawamata” by Ritsuko Matsumoto, a Japanese marimba player who had dedicated an entire record to the sounds, landscapes and culture of that place.

The album immediately caught my attention, so I decided to write to her. I told her that we were traveling to Japan, that we would be spending a few days in Kawamata, and that I would love for us to meet and perhaps make some music together.

A few days later, I received her reply. Ritsuko told me that Kawamata was her grandparents’ hometown and was now based in Sagamihara. Still, she was excited about the idea of meeting, and that was the beginning of an exchange of emails that continued for several months. Little by little, we shared music, stories and ideas about things we could do together during our trip.

Finally, on September 20, the day came for us to meet in person.

Ritsuko met us at the station and took us to her home, where her husband and her daughter Rin were waiting for us. They had prepared a delicious Japanese lunch, and after eating and talking for a while, we went into her studio to do what we had been imagining for months: play music together.

We really didn’t need to plan much. We simply started playing, and for most of the afternoon we freely improvised with her marimba, Jesica’s violin and my piano. We tried ideas, listened to each other, changed directions and started again. We hardly spoke while we were playing because, somehow, we didn’t need to.

Meanwhile, Cielo was playing with Rin in the living room, and every now and then we could hear their laughter coming into the studio. It was one of those afternoons when something you have imagined for months finally happens and, fortunately, turns out to be even more beautiful than you expected.

After spending the day at her home, Ritsuko took us to the Hikari to Midori no Bijutsukan museum (Museum of the light and green) where we will perform together on October 17. There we met her friend Nagata, who has been instrumental in making this encounter possible, as well as the director of the museum. We spent some time talking about music, art and ideas for the performance, which will have a special meaning for us because it will be our final concert before returning to Argentina.

For our second day together, we had planned something completely different: taking our instruments to a park and having a kind of outdoor musical picnic. But Typhoon Dujuan changed our plans and, with the recommendation to stay indoors, Ritsuko invited us back to her home.

So after midday we returned to her studio and simply continued where we had left off the day before.

This time, we also decided to record some of what happened. For more than two hours we improvised and played with the instruments, with the sounds that appeared in the moment, and even with Cielo’s voice, which eventually became part of the music. From that session, we recorded a unique twenty-minute piece in both audio and video that we hope to share very soon.

When we finished, Ritsuko and her family invited us to dinner. We had sushi, miso soup and several other Japanese dishes that we enjoyed discovering around the table. We had also brought a few things from Argentina, so they got to try mate and alfajores. By the end of it, we had spent two full days together sharing food, conversations, music and family life.

Something about this whole story that I especially like:

A few months ago, I was in Buenos Aires looking for information about a small town in Fukushima when I accidentally discovered an album that made me curious. I sent an email without really knowing what would come of it, and that email eventually brought us to Ritsuko’s home, where we met her family, improvised together for hours and began preparing a concert at a museum in Sagamihara.

I guess this is also why we make these trips.

Beyond the concerts, the places we want to visit and all the plans we can make in advance, traveling with music as our excuse allows us to meet people we probably would never have met otherwise.

Thank you, Ritsuko, and your beautiful family for opening the doors of your home to us and making us feel so welcome.

We leave Sagamihara with happy hearts and full of energy to continue this tour, meeting people and making music along the way.

As an artist, that’s the only question that prevents my creative decisions from becoming noise in a world already full of everything.

Twenty years ago, I started The Kyoto Connection, a musical project inspired by a city that I had never visited. Over the years, Kyoto became much more than a place. It became a source of inspiration, friendship, and unexpected connections with people from around the world.

This september, that story continues. Together with Cafe Monogataru, we are delighted to host the very first edition of K-CONNECTION in Yamashina!

We imagine it as a small and welcoming gathering where artists can share their work, their stories, and the many different ways Kyoto has touched their lives.

We don’t want this to feel like a traditional performance. We hope it becomes a space where conversations begin, collaborations are born, and strangers leave feeling they have known each other for years. Whether you come to perform or simply to listen, we would love to welcome you!

Event Information

Date: Sunday, September 27 2026 – 4:00 PM
Venue: Cafe Monogataru. 11-1 Misasagi-Hirabayashi-cho, Yamashina-ku, Kyoto City (If the location is difficult to find on Google Maps, please search using the parking lot address:27-4 Anshu-Okunoda, Yamashina-ku, Kyoto City)

Open Call for Artists

¡We are currently inviting artists to participate! Each selected artist will have approximately 15 minutes to share their work.

We welcome proposals in music, poetry, storytelling, photography, painting, dance, and every other form of creative expression.

Because the venue is intentionally small and intimate, not every application can be accepted. Apply here.