"Making instruments, tuning sounds, being a musician, this flow is essential for me to see the world".
Modern classical ambience from Akira Uchida, a graduate from Senzoku Gakuen College of Music, who explores sound through tuning, medieval music, and acoustics, and supporting jazz pianists as a piano tuner and instrument maker.
After training under instrument maker Masahiro Adachi, he became an independent clavichord builder. In 2020, he created an instrument for Ryuichi Sakamoto. In 2021, he crafted another using reclaimed wood from Kiyomizu-dera Temple. His work focuses on making, tuning, and performing instruments. Since 2015, he has released 7 albums, including 3 albums on the Kiku label and 3 albums on IIKKI including "Nusa".
Nusa is the result of a creative dialogue between the photographer Masao Yamamoto and the composer and musician Akira Uchida. Nusa is the last part of their collaborative trilogy that began with light (“Sasanami”, 2020), darkness (“Kurayami”, 2023), and the balance of the two (“Nusa”, 2026).
For this last part of the trilogy, Masao Yamamoto and Akira Uchida travelled to the island of Hokkaido at the beginning of 2026 to take photographs and audio recordings of the ice and the surrounding landscapes. The soundtrack to the book is provided by Akira Uchida, whose atmospheric melodies heighten the primordial and ephemeral aspects of Yamamoto’s images.