Joe Hisaishi - met beelden van Studio Ghibli

On 2 October 2026 at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Joe Hisaishi come together around the music of Studio Ghibli, with film footage projected on a large screen to accompany the performance. Hisaishi, born Mamoru Fujisawa (Nagano, 1950), is the composer behind Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. He developed an idiom in which clear orchestration, simple melodic lines and repetitive patterns interlock, often with a prominent role for the piano. In addition to his work for Hayao Miyazaki, he has composed for Takeshi Kitano and written concert works; as a conductor he regularly presents suites that bring his film music into the concert hall. For this evening his Ghibli oeuvre forms the core, with themes that rise directly from the animations and unfold within a symphonic framework.

The Concertgebouw Orchestra performs the orchestral suites and themes Hisaishi wrote for Ghibli. Strings and woodwinds carry the melodies, brass and percussion establish the pulse, with space for piano and soloistic timbres. Projections from the films run alongside the music, so motifs, landscapes and characters immediately reappear recognizably on screen. Music and animation move in tandem, with the orchestra’s phrasing as a compass. Here you hear these scores in full orchestral forces, together with the images for which they were composed.