Zahra & Rocca: The lungs still remember what the mouth never said
Date & Time
Saturday, May 23, 2026
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Genres
Cost
$30
Age Restriction
18+
About
In Tokyo, the city Zahra & Rocca started in, shrines exist in the middle of the biggest city in the world. You make the decision to pass through the gate and walk further and further in. You climb the stairs and press your hands together. You try to pray — but as you stand with your head hanging in a bow, the words don’t come to you. Fragments, images, everything you can’t seem to verbalize. You pray in pictures as your thoughts go haywire until something finally condenses. And then you walk back out. Using field recordings they have personally gathered in New York, Tehran, and Tokyo, Zahra & Rocca build sound from memory. Indeed, nostalgia is not a strategy. But you must understand the threads that have been pulled within you, so they cannot be pulled against you. Artist: Zahra Najafi, Rocca Hashimoto Zahra Najafi is a composer and vocalist whose practice is rooted in three formative sonic worlds: Religious recitation, mourning rituals where repeating body-held rhythms preserve grief across generations, and marching band. Traditions where the word rides the rhythm, where sound is memory, where collective motion becomes meaning. From that foundation she samples the sounds we've grown numb to: field recordings from New York, Tokyo, and Tehran gathered as living archives of disappearing worlds. — Rocca Hashimoto is a Tokyo-based pianist and composer — Gold Prize winner at the All Japan Bach Piano Competition, scholarship recipient at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, currently studying composition at Tokyo University of the Arts where her work spans chamber, orchestral, and electronic music. Her orchestral work premiered at Sogakudo Hall's Tokyo Geidai Morning Concert with the Geidai Philharmonia Orchestra. She has composed and arranged for FANTASTICS from EXILE TRIBE at Yoyogi National Gymnasium and Ariake Arena, and for Hiromi Go's Dinner Show at the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay and The Prince Park Tower.