The Only Person Alive Who Plays It Will Headline Carnegie Hall

NEW YORK — Satochiki, the only person in the world who plays the Wako, an original Japanese string instrument he co-created in 2015, will make his solo debut at Carnegie Hall with a solo Wako Recital on Wednesday, May 19, 2027, at 7:30 PM in New York City. The performance is listed on Carnegie Hall's official calendar.

The anomaly is the story. The Wako did not exist before 2015, when Satochiki co-created it with master craftsman Nishino Kazuhiro. Built from Japanese cedar, zelkova, and washi paper, it received Japan's national Wood Design Award the year it was made. Little more than a decade later, an instrument played by exactly one person on earth is set to headline a solo recital on one of the most storied stages in music.

Because Satochiki is the Wako's sole performer, there is no existing repertoire and no tradition to inherit. Every work he plays was written for an instrument that exists nowhere else, performed by the one musician alive who can play it. Over the past decade, he has built that body of music from the ground up — effectively developing a new musical language alongside the instrument that produces it.

The debut follows years of building an audience for a sound the world had never heard. In November 2025, Satochiki sold out his 10th-anniversary concert, "ACROSS THE HISTORY," at the 1,867-seat ACROS Fukuoka Symphony Hall, one of Japan's premier classical venues. He has been officially invited by the Taiwanese government to perform at cultural events, and performed at the 80th-anniversary event commemorating the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Japan's atomic-bomb survivors. He has collaborated with composer Yoshimori Makoto, known for his score for "Natsume's Book of Friends," and has performed across Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Europe, and the United States over more than ten years.

What makes the engagement unprecedented is the combination: a solo recital, performed on a self-created instrument, at Carnegie Hall, by the only living person who plays it.

"Two hundred years from now, I won't be here. But music and culture outlast any person. That is why I am committed to carrying the Wako forward — to the next generation, and the one after that." — Satochiki

The recital is listed on Carnegie Hall's official calendar at carnegiehall.org.