{"id":311174,"date":"2026-05-12T00:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T00:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/311174\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T00:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T00:59:09","slug":"japanese-classical-sensation-hayato-sumino-delights-in-san-diego","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/311174\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese classical sensation Hayato Sumino delights in San Diego"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hayato<\/a>Hayato Sumino at The Conrad in La Jolla on Saturday. (Photo by Ken Jaques\/La Jolla Music Society)<\/p>\n

The phenomenon that is Hayato Sumino<\/a> descended for the first time on San Diego Saturday night, and his fans \u2014 1.56 million follow his YouTube page Cateen<\/a> \u2014 came out in force. <\/p>\n

Though the 30-year-old Japanese pianist holds a Guinness World Record for indoor piano recital ticket sales (18,564), the concert\u2019s presenter, La Jolla Music Society, deals in much more intimate seat counts. So rather than disappoint the wait-listed multitudes, it opened its nearby JAI venue to enable viewing via projection screen.<\/p>\n

Judging by the unanimous standing ovation at the concert\u2019s end, the Sumino phenomenon is the opposite of a spent force. A glance at Sumino\u2019s program \u2014 Bach, Chopin, Gershwin, Ravel \u2014 might conjure mistaken assumptions that Sumino belongs to and sees himself as one of the class of classically trained and focused pianists whose repertoire \u2014 which also includes Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Debussy \u2014 he often shares. But for numerous reasons, Sumino is sui generis.<\/p>\n

Instead of taking the traditional conservatory route, for example, he earned a master\u2019s in information science and technology at Japan\u2019s best university (Tokyo Daigaku) and studied information processing technology and AI at Pierre Boulez\u2019s IRCAM\u00a0(Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics\/Music) in Paris. <\/p>\n

Instead of clinging to the canon, Sumino has created his own, covering the traditional classical composers but also Japanese contemporaries (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Joe Hisaishi of Studio Ghibli fame), jazz and pop (Brad Mehldau, Billie Eilish), folk\/traditional (\u201cTwinkle Twinkle Little Star,\u201d Japanese children\u2019s songs), and his own hybrid post-minimalist compositions. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Most telling of all, instead of performing on a standalone Steinway grand, Sumino immersed himself in a unique \u00a0performing cockpit on The Conrad<\/a>\u2019s stage: a Steinway grand to the right, a Steinway upright (with top lid open to enable prepared-piano techniques) in the center, a Sequential Prophet-6 synthesizer to the left, and a Kawai toy piano closing the semicircle. \u201cI\u2019m just happy to be surrounded by as many keyboards as possible,\u201d he quipped, a mad musical scientist in his lair.<\/p>\n

Sumino cheekily intermixed the Bach and Chopin with three of his own compositions (one third of the program\u2019s duration) and added his own arrangements of Gershwin\u2019s American in Paris and Ravel\u2019s Bol\u00e9ro. From the start, he showed a fluid, even-fingered lightness of touch and attention to each voice. Coupled with his flair for improvisation and sense of narrative flow, this lent his opening Bach (Chromatic Fantasia & Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903) a fluid, non-metronomic quality, a Bach infused with Rameau\u2019s light. <\/p>\n

To close the first half, Sumino segued unapologetically from his own nocturne Once in a Blue Moon to a spellbinding, unsentiment reading of Chopin\u2019s Nocturne in C Minor (opus 48). The Chopin Scherzo No. 1 (opus 20) that followed, stripped of Romantic varnish, spotlighted Sumino\u2019s talent for making the often-heard feel new, even improvised.<\/p>\n

At their best, Sumino\u2019s own compositions \u2014 New Birth, Recollection, three nocturnes, a jazzy improvisation to open the second half, and Big Cat Waltz \u2014 are melodically affecting, soothingly involving works in the New Age vein of Sakamoto or Ludovico Einaudi, spiced with interesting forays into prepared-piano techniques on the upright, from plucking and muting to harp-like pizzicato effects on his upright\u2019s exposed strings. The jazzy, energized improvisation Sumino created to open the second half showed these strengths in the best light. At its worst, his music (his nocturnes, Big Cat Waltz) can sound soppy and derivative.<\/p>\n

The main entrees of the evening\u2019s second half were Sumino\u2019s playful and disarmingly orchestral takes on two century-old gems: Gershwin\u2019s American in Paris and Ravel\u2019s evergreen Bol\u00e9ro \u2014 composed almost simultaneously in 1928. In the former, Sumino\u2019s deft use of a small keyboard-shaped Suzuki Melodion with an extension-tube mouthpiece lent just the right Parisian tang, and though his velocity occasionally blurred passagework and muddied textures, his feat \u2014 distilling a 35+-instrument tour-de-force with only two hands and one mouth \u2014 fully earned the ovation he got.<\/p>\n

In the Ravel, Sumino surpassed himself. Using mutes on the upright\u2019s strings he created the dry side-drum ostinato that impels Bol\u00e9ro forward, injected a high-register timbre by playing \u2014 behind his back \u2014 the toy piano, and magisterially captured the instrumental transitions of Ravel\u2019s gradually intensifying crescendo. His encores were Chopin\u2019s Mazurka Op. 24, No. 2, and Nikolai Kapustin\u2019s Op. 40, No. 3 (Toccatina).<\/p>\n

This was not a profound or deep musical evening, but it wasn\u2019t intended to be. As Gershwin said of American in Paris: \u201cNothing solemn about it. If it pleases \u2026 as a light, jolly piece, it succeeds.\u201d A multi-talent with inventive spirit to spare, Sumino succeeded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hayato Sumino at The Conrad in La Jolla on Saturday. (Photo by Ken Jaques\/La Jolla Music Society) The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7974,130452,10507,15060,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-311174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-classical-music","tag-hayato-sumino","tag-la-jolla-music-society","tag-review","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}