Something For The Weekend: Kensho Watanabe's cultural picks

Conductor Kensho Watanabe is a rising star in the classical world - following performances with the London Philharmonic and Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestras, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Turku Philharmonic, and a Polish debut with Filarmonia Szczecin, he also made his conducting debut at the prestigious Metropolitan Opera in New York.

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This month he joins the RTÉ Concert Orchestra for a performance at the National Concert Hall, celebrating the works of a trio of classical legends: Ravel, Britten and Brahms.

We asked Kensho for his choice cultural picks...

FILM

A lot of my film viewing occurs in the air these days. Last month on a flight from Detroit to Paris, I saw Past Lives, a wonderful film by Celine Song about a pair of childhood friends in Korea and how their relationship and lives change as one of them moves to the United States. I moved from Japan to the US at the age of five, so this film spoke to me in many ways.

I’d be remiss not to plug an excellent film from Quebec, Les Jours Heureux by Chloé Robichaud, for which I had the chance to serve as a conducting consultant and coach along with my mentor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The film stars Sophie Desmarais, who worked incredibly hard to learn how to conduct an orchestra, and delivers an incredible performance!

MUSIC

I haven’t been able to stop listening to Vaundy, a Japanese singer/songwriter, since discovering his music about a year ago. Odoriko is a track that never fails to keep my day upbeat and sunny.

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BOOK

I’m a huge fan of the author Haruki Murakami, and recently finished reading Killing Commendatore. Murakami very often weaves classical music and jazz references into his novels, with this one heavily referencing Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. A great entry point into Murakami’s surrealist literature is Norwegian Wood.

In my constant effort to improve my French (since moving to Paris in 2021), French TV series are a focal point of my streaming practices. I highly recommend Call My Agent, Family Business and Lupin.

ART

I had the chance to revisit the Detroit Institute of Arts while I was in the city for a month performing at Detroit Opera. A favorite is the incredible series of murals by Diego Rivera, titled The Detroit Industry Murals. Twenty-seven fresco panels line an inner courtyard of the DIA, which is known as the Rivera Court, depicting the workers at the Ford Motor Company.

PODCAST

I’ve been enjoying The Pivot podcast, hosted by three former NFL players Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder. I’m a big sports fan, and their guests are usually from the sports or entertainment world.

TECH

Deepl is a lifesaver for any on-the-go translation, far more reliable and colloquial than Google Translate. It can be accessed via web or as an app.

THE NEXT BIG THING

Modern Opera! There are so many stories of diverse backgrounds being told through the magic of Opera these days. Last season, I worked on and conducted one performance of Terence Blanchard’s first opera, Champion, at the Metropolitan Opera. The work centres around the life of Emile Griffith, a former heavyweight boxing champion who lived an incredibly operatic life. Not just limited to the big houses of the world, there’s amazing work being done by smaller companies such as Heartbeat Opera in NYC, who are bringing innovation and creative reformatting of canonic works to make them more relevant to the audiences of today.

RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Kensho Watanabe: Ravel, Britten and Brahms is at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on Saturday 25th November - find out more here.

Something For The Weekend: Kensho Watanabe's cultural picks

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