Charlotte Kemp Muhl, the Grammy Award–winning bassist and artist, has been announced as a guest performer in Keiichiro Shibuya’s latest work “ANDROID OPERA MIRROR — Deconstruction and Rebirth —”, to be held at Suntory Hall on Wednesday, November 5, 2025.

Charlotte Kemp Muhl is known for her duo The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger with Sean Ono Lennon, as well as for performing bass for St. Vincent, this year’s Grammy Award winner. She also leads Finis Musicae, a project in which a robotic arm plays the cello—crossing boundaries between music, fashion, and technology. In this performance, she will make a special appearance with electronics and spoken word, joining Android: MIRIA, Keiichiro Shibuya, and Buddhist monks on stage as a symbolic presence that transcends the boundaries between human and non-human, sound and body.

The collaboration between Shibuya and Kemp Muhl has already begun, as Kemp Muhl and Sage Morei created the AI-generated teaser video for the performance (AI Animation & Video Edit: Charlotte Kemp Muhl, Sage Morei).

In addition, ahead of the November 5 performance, Keiichiro Shibuya’s program notes explaining the work have been released.

Program Note

It has been nearly ten years since I began working with humanoid robots—androids—almost by chance.

As a result, the android has come to function for me both as an icon of theatrical works like opera and as a kind of instrument still in development. For that very reason, I have never felt satisfied, even after several upgrades.

Until now, androids have expressed physical movement through pneumatic control. This makes it possible to create soft, “natural” motions, but conversely, it means they cannot fluctuate between strict control and improvisational, autonomous movement. I also felt limitations in their ability to produce “unnatural” movements—something humans cannot do.

Over time, the desire to one day create an android that possessed both the movements and appearance I envisioned began to take root within me—alongside the question, “Why do I continue to make works with androids?”

At the same time, when I first began working with androids, I had an intuition: “Someday, these will become vessels for AI.” That has now become reality. The newly developed Android Maria can converse fluidly in any language via real-time API integration. The application of AI learning to lyrics and vocal performance will likely continue to evolve at a terrifying pace. Now that I have completed the creation of Android Maria, I feel a trembling joy—as if I had finally obtained both a truly new instrument and a new form of life.

I say “life,” because the very first phrase that came to mind when I created Android Maria was: “Death is not singular.”
This has been a core concept for me ever since THE END, expressed through various variations and forms over the years.

One cannot choose one’s own death. This theme has taken on many variations, but the discomfort I feel about being unable to determine the terms of one’s own death has haunted my life like trauma—especially after experiencing the death of someone close.

Regardless of that discomfort felt by those directly involved, someone always ends up accepting another’s death, speaking of it to others, and transmitting it onward. Through that process, the boundary between life and death is constructed. It is a natural flow—like water running its course. But I have come to believe that transforming the “something that cannot be contained” within that flow into a work is the destiny I’ve been given.

In the years since, I have created Vocaloid Operas and Android Operas as an antithesis to the Western, human-centric artistic format. The impetus behind this was a reckless and deeply personal desire to respond to that destiny—by constructing concepts and perspectives that transcend the uncertainty of human life and death—and thereby exact some form of revenge on fate.

I anticipated that this process would lead to unexpected developments, but I never imagined I would end up creating my own android.

The work being performed this time, ANDROID OPERA MIRROR – Deconstruction and Rebirth, is a newly reconstructed version of ANDROID OPERA MIRROR, which has toured since 2022—premiering at Expo Dubai, followed by Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in 2023, and The Garden Hall in Tokyo in 2024.

As with the original MIRROR, there is no overarching narrative story. Each piece envisions the end of the world, along with simulations and variations of what might follow.

And when I presented MIRROR in Japan last year, I wrote the following:

“Even if the world were to end, would it not be enough if the process and aftermath were beautiful? Is it not an act of blessing to imagine that and celebrate it together with androids and AI—beings that do not end? In an age when even the concept of ‘composer’ is nearing its end, isn’t presenting such an act as a theatrical work the only thing left for me to do? With that sentiment, I created this piece.”

At that time, for me, “the end” was something that still lay in the near future. I sought to construct a celebratory simulation of it on stage, with the audience left only to observe. But over the past year or so, my consciousness has shifted:
Could it be that the end has already arrived?
Are we not already living within the end?

As I was developing the concept for this new version, ANDROID OPERA MIRROR – Deconstruction and Rebirth, I received a message from a friend in Paris who works as a magazine editor. She said they wanted to run a feature on me next year. The theme of the issue: Voodoo—that is, spirits. It was a strange coincidence.

Due to my work, I travel to many places around the world and meet many people. Over the past year especially, I’ve sensed—particularly in Europe—that people are seeking a new form of spirituality mediated through technology.
We are already living in a world that has ended, and music surrounds us like spirits, enclosing us from all sides.

In line with that intuition, the new version of this work will spatially deploy four monks chanting shōmyō from Mount Kōya, along with brass instruments such as horn, trumpet, and trombone—scattered throughout the audience area rather than being confined to the stage. At times, the space will resound like a prayer; at other times, like a fanfare, a warning siren, or even a missile. All of it will melt into an electronic membrane of sound that blankets the entire hall.

At the center of it all, Maria—reborn in the form of an android—will float, sing, and dance. The scene may resemble not so much a spirit, but a simulated ritual of some futuristic techno-cult. And yet, at the same time, I hope it can offer a vision of life and death—capable of repetition and duplication—as a form of hope.

Keiichiro Shibuya
October 29, 2025