Ryoko Aoki

Ryoko Aoki (Oita, Japan, 1977) is a groundbreaking female performer in the traditional Noh theatre, a field historically dominated by male actors. She is a pioneer of merging Noh – traditional recitation – with contemporary music, inspiring nearly 60 compositions by esteemed composers such as Peter Eötvös, Toshio Hosokawa, Stefano Gervasoni and José María Sánchez-Verdú.

Aoki has performed with ensembles and orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Spanish National Orchestra and Choir (OCNE), the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Ensemble Musikfabrik, the Remix Ensemble, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Arditti Quartet, the Quatour Diotima, and the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra.

Aoki made her debut at the Teatro Real de Madrid in Wolfgang Rihm’s opera The Conquest of Mexico in the role of Malinche, in a production directed by Pierre Audi in 2013. Furthermore, she premiered Toshio Hosokawa’s Futari Shizuka (The Maiden from the Sea) with the Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Philharmonie de Paris and Peter Eötvös's Secret Kiss with the Ensemble Musikfabrik at the Berlin Philharmonie. In October 2024, she presented Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande op. 5 in a production directed by Pierre Audi at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

Photo: Tadayuki Minamoto