Ryoko Aoki holds a unique position in the field of Noh theatre as a female singer and performer. She has performed in several traditional Noh plays, historically the reserve of male actors. Above all, she is the pioneer of and inspiration for a new artistic form combining utai – traditional Noh recitation – with contemporary music. Nearly 60 works have been written for her by various composers including Peter Eötvös, Toshio Hosokawa, Stefano Gervasoni, José María Sánchez-Verdú, and Oliver Schneller.

She has performed with ensembles and orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Ensemble intercontemporain, the Ensemble Musikfabrik, the Remix Ensemble, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Arditti Quartet, the Quatour Diotima, and the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra.

In 2013, Ryoko 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. The world premiere of Noriko Baba's "Nopera" AOI with the Ensemble 2e2m in Paris in 2016 was followed by world premieres of two works composed for her in the 2017/18 season: Federico Gardella’s Two Souls at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Toshio Hosokawa’s Futari Shizuka (The Maiden from the Sea) with the Ensemble intercontemporain at the Philharmonie de Paris and Kölner Philharmonie. The work was then performed at the University of Toronto, the TTIMF Festival in Tongyeong/Korea, the Talea Ensemble in New York and the Suntory Hall Summer Festival 2021 with the Ensemble intercontemporain. Furthermore, she performed Peter Eötvös' Secret kiss, premiered by the Gageego Ensemble, at Konserthus Göteborg, followed by performances at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Casa da Música Porto with Remix Ensemble and Auditorio Nacional Madrid with Plural Ensemble as well as with the Ensemble Musikfabrik at the Berlin Philharmonie and in Cologne and Budapest. 

The 2024/25 season once again has special projects in store. In October 2024, Ryoko Aoki will present Arnold Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande op. 5 in a new version for Noh voice at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. In February 2025, Noriko Baba's Nôpéra AOI will be performed for the first time in Lausanne, where Ryoko Aoki will also lead a masterclass. A new work by Noriko Baba for Noh voice and orchestra will be premiered on 1 June in Metz with the Orchestre national de Metz Grand Est. The Spanish premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s Futari Shizuka (The Maiden from the Sea) will take place in March 2025 at the Palau de la Música de València. The Japanese composer Misato Mochizuki is wriring the music theatre piece Otemba especially for Ryoko Aoki, which will premiere at the Holland Festival in June 2025 under the direction of Jan van den Berg. Finally, the Argentinian-Spanish composer Fabián Panisello is composing Change, a semi-staged work on the subject of climate change for baritone, Noh voice, ensemble and electronics, to be performed at the KONTAKTE Festival for Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art at the Akademie der Künste Berlin in June 2025 and, in cooperation with the OENM, in Salzburg in October 2025. 

As part of her NohxContemporary Music project, Ryoko Aoki has commissioned a series of new works for Noh voice. A recording of some of these compositions, including Peter Eötvös' Harakiri, was released in 2014. During Covid-19 pandemic, she broadcasted the online concert HO NOH – Pray for an end to the Covid-19 as a live-streaming remote session on her YouTube Channel.  In 2021, she released the recording Yoru no Kotoba with the cellist of Ensemble intercontemporain, Éric-Maria Couturier, which was created in a real-time remote recording session between Tokyo and Paris.

Ryoko Aoki obtained a BA and a Master of Music from the Faculty of Music at the Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music with a focus on the Kanze school of Noh theatre, before gaining a Ph.D. from the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, with a thesis on "Women and Noh". She was appointed "Japan Cultural Envoy" by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japanese gov¬ernment in 2015 and was awarded “The Creative Tradition Prize” by the Japan Arts Foundation in 2019. 

2024/25 season

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A list of all works by Ryoko Aoki can be found here.

In this short chamber opera, which is inspired by the traditional Noh play Futari Shizuka (The Two Shizukas), Toshio Hosokawa's music tells the unique story of the encounter of an ancient Japanese ghost with a present-day refugee.
The libretto, written by Oriza Hirata is sung both in English and Japanese: a migrant woman, Helen (soprano), is lost on a beach shore where she meets another woman, who has been lost in the snow for nine centuries: The Ghost of Lady Shizuka. They share a tragic fate, caused by men’s wars, but their encounter might change their paths.