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Yōko Kanno Holds 2 NYC Shows on April 10, 11

Mammoth Live announced on Tuesday that it will bring musician and composer Yōko Kanno for two concerts at the Kings Theatre and The Town Hall, both in New York City, on April 10 and 11, respectively. Tickets for the Kings Theatre and The Town Hall performances will be available on Friday.

The performance at the Kings Theatre will include Kanno's SEATBELTS act, the first time Kanno and SEATBELTS are performing in North America. The SEATBELTS are a collaborative group between Kanno and various musicians to perform the soundtrack for the Cowboy Bebop anime. Kanno will perform her own show, titled "Piano Me," at The Town Hall.

Yōko Kanno is perhaps best known for her work on the soundtracks for Cowboy Bebop and many entries in the Macross series. Her work on multiple jazz sub-genres in the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack has given her a reputation as a jazz composer, but her work spans multiple genres, including rock and classical. She scored Macross Plus, which has numerous electronic and classically inspired compositions, and did the same for Macross Frontier. She has collaborated with director Shōji Kawamori not only on Macross, but also in Arjuna and his Aquarion franchise. Her collaboration with director Shinichirō Watanabe stretches from Macross Plus and Cowboy Bebop to Terror in Resonance and Space Dandy, as well as Kids on the Slope, where she once again exercised her jazz composition in a story about aspiring jazz musicians.

She is also known for a long-time collaboration with singer Maaya Sakamoto. Kanno comosed Sakamoto's debut single "Yakusoku wa Iranai," which Sakamoto sang when she was only 16 years old. The song served as the well-known opening song for The Vision of Escaflowne anime, for which Kanno also composed the soundtrack, and Sakamoto also performed as the lead character Hitomi. Kanno was the exclusive composer for Sakamoto's records until 2003 (though they frequently collaborated afterward), and composed many of Sakamoto's subsequent popular songs, including "Platinum" (from Card Captor Sakura), "Hemisphere" (from RahXephon), "Gravity" (from Wolf's Rain), and "Triangler" (from Macross Frontier), the latter three of which also featuring in shows where Kanno composed the soundtrack.

Source: Email correspondence