Berlin-based composer, keyboardist and synthesist Midori Hirano has announced her new album OTONOMA, out on Feb. 20th, 2026. Along with the album’s announcement, Hirano has shared the piece “Oto, Kioku,” a luminous blend of swelling synthesizers, plucky electronics and dulcet piano chords dotting a vibrant horizon. The piece evokes the joy in discovery and how the memory of something once-new takes new shapes when looking back.
Hirano elaborates on the meaning in the song’s name:
“‘Oto’ means ‘sound,’ which is the same as the album title. ‘Kioku’ means ‘memory’ in Japanese. This track features a warm, bouncy synth sound that was spontaneously generated while I was experimenting with my synths. It left such a vivid impression on me that I couldn’t forget it, which inspired the title.”
The artistry of Midori Hirano lives in the resonance between sonic and visual worlds. Over her distinguished career the Berlin-based, Kyoto-born composer, pianist, and synthesist has crafted a distinctive voice straddling the spheres of classical music and harmonies with abstraction and invention. In addition to works under her own name, Hirano has released dynamic experiments under her MimiCof moniker as well as composed for film, television, art exhibitions and world expos. Hirano is acclaimed for crafting emotive works that stimulate all the senses with impressionism, or painting with sound. OTONOMA is the culmination of her work synthesizing these elements and highlights her acumen as a practiced and intuitive artist. The album infuses Hirano’s more classical sense of harmony on the piano with the endless textural possibilities of synthesizers. Like nebulas coalescing into galaxies, the pieces of OTONOMA emanate hues dense with subtle layers of color folded into gradients, arresting and radiant.
Hirano began her musical life learning piano and classical forms, eventually extending into more experimental territory with analog and modular synthesizers. The creation of OTONOMA found Hirano merging the distinct phases and parallel journeys in her music – both under her own name and as MimiCof – into a wholly realized voice. The album sculpts her divergent musical identities into complimentary forces, infusing her more classical sense of harmony on the piano with the endless textural possibilities of synthesizers. In Japanese the word “Oto” means “sound” and “Ma” refers to the “space” or “interval” between things. So, “Otonoma” literally means “the space between sounds.” In classical usage, “Ma” can also mean “room” which allows a different reading, “a room of sounds”. “I titled the album with the hope that listeners would move through these different spaces of sound as they listen,” Hirano notes. “Like moving through rooms, the album showcases my various sound palettes.”
