Anime Boston Hosts Yoko Kanno

Kanno to perform concert at event on April 3

The staff of the Anime Boston convention announced on Tuesday that musician Yōko Kanno will attend the event this year as a guest of honor. She will perform a concert in the Hynes Memorial Auditorium on April 3. Attendees will need a concert ticket in addition to their badge. They can either purchase a seat or enter a lottery for a free seat. Kanno will also have a panel on April 4, and she will also sign autographs at the event.

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 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 composed 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.

This year's Anime Boston will take place at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA from April 3-5.

Source: Anime Boston's official website