KIAC

Playwright and director. President of the Professional College of Arts and Tourism. He received the 39th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 1995 for "Tokyo Note," the 22nd Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award in 2019 for "The History of the Rise and Fall of Japanese Literature," and Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture and Communication in 2011. He has written and directed operas, including "Stilles Meer" (composed by Toshio Hosokawa) at the Hamburg State Opera in 2016 and "Zero" (composed by Kaito Nakahori) at the Toyooka Theater Festival in 2020.

A Japanese-born composer based in New York, USA, Nakahori began composing under the influence of Toru Takemitsu's music and gagaku, traditional Japanese court music. He advocates the concepts of “timeless music” in which sound and silence are interwoven in a meditative and hazy tonal world, and “spacetime music” in which sound image and acoustic changes are expressed. Since his portrait concert at the United Nations Headquarters in 2015, he has presented a variety of compositions from opera to gagaku around the world, and has collaborated in the fields of theater and the visual arts. In 2025, he will launch Mito International Music Festival as its director.
In 2025, the theater opera "The Planet without Sound - Clockwork Universe" will be co-produced and staged at Toyooka Theater Festival, Setouchi Triennale, and Mito International Music Festival.