{"product_id":"joe_hisaishi_conducts","title":"Joe Hisaishi Conducts","description":"\u003cp\u003eJoe Hisaishi Conducts is a live album by Japanese composer, conductor, and pianist Joe Hisaishi, released digitally on 8 August 2025 via Deutsche Grammophon in collaboration with Universal Music Japan, with physical CD and vinyl editions following on 29 May 2026. The album documents the seventh volume of Hisaishi's ongoing \"Joe Hisaishi Future Orchestra Classics\" concert series, recorded at Tokyo's Suntory Hall on 31 July 2024. It is Hisaishi's third full-length release on Deutsche Grammophon, and features the Future Orchestra Classics — an ensemble of young musicians he founded to bring classical and contemporary music to new audiences — alongside the Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo and soprano Ella Taylor.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 12-track, approximately 80-minute programme pairs two works united by themes of violence and landscape. The album opens with the Japanese premiere of Steve Reich's The Desert Music (1984), a five-movement minimalist work scored for orchestra and chorus drawing on the poetry of William Carlos Williams. The second half presents Hisaishi's own five-movement suite The End of the World, originally conceived following his visit to Ground Zero after 9\/11 and described by the composer as a response to \"the anxiety and chaos\" of that event; the work incorporates orchestral bombast, fragments of jazz, wailing solo instrumental lines, and a soprano solo sung by Ella Taylor setting words written by Hisaishi's daughter Mai, before closing with Hisaishi's recomposition of the Skeeter Davis song of the same name. Apple Music Classical praised the album as \"a stark reminder of two acts of great violence that humans have wreaked upon themselves,\" noting that Hisaishi \"conducts a tight performance that gives the composer's vision ample room to breathe.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Record Store","offers":[{"title":"CD \/ Album","offer_id":53630354981178,"sku":"38589","price":28.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":false},{"title":"Vinyl \/ 2LP","offer_id":53630355046714,"sku":"38590","price":61.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/2041\/0682\/files\/Screenshot_2026-06-19_at_5.14.26_PM.jpeg?v=1781903774","url":"https:\/\/recordstore.ca\/products\/joe_hisaishi_conducts","provider":"Record Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}