Murakami Mixtape: An Evening of Music and Spoken Word In Celebration of Acclaimed Author Haruki Murakami

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Japan Society and The Town Hall Present

Murakami Mixtape:
An Evening of Music and Spoken Word
In Celebration of Acclaimed Author Haruki Murakami

In Partnership with ANA (All Nippon Airways)

Featuring
Opening Remarks by Haruki Murakami
Music curated by Jason Moran and Friends
Readings curated by Motoyuki Shibata and Roland Kelts

December 11th at The Town Hall
7 PM

With the support of
The Center for Fiction

Murakami Mixtape is a special evening celebrating the integral connection between music and the life and works of Haruki Murakami—featuring Opening Remarks by Haruki Murakami live and in-person. With Jason Moran, one of the world’s greatest living jazz musicians, and two of Murakami’s closest confidants, Motoyuki Shibata and Roland Kelts, The Town Hall and Japan Society honor Murakami’s career and creations, both as an artist and one of music’s greatest enthusiasts.

Tickets Available for Japan Society Members on Sept. 18
Tickets Available for the General Public on Sept. 26

**All current Japan Society members will receive a member-only registration link on Sept. 18. New Japan Society members between Sept. 18 and Sept. 25 will receive this link inside their membership confirmation email.**

Haruki Murakami is a singular talent. A globally recognized literary icon, his works including Norwegian Wood, 1Q84 and The City and Its Uncertain Walls have been translated into more than 50 languages and are beloved around the world. He is heralded for his thought-provoking prose seamlessly blending real and surreal elements as well as a deep passion for music woven into his books. Further, from 1974 to 1981, Haruki Murakami owned and operated the now legendary jazz club Peter Cat. Widely recognized as one of the world’s most prolific album collectors, Murakami is believed to own over 10,000 records, and he has written extensive pieces of music criticism that have never been translated from Japanese. 

He has won the Yomiuri Prize, World Fantasy Award, Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, Franz Kafka Prize and more. On December 11, Japan Society, a storied institution with over 100 years of history, awards Haruki Murakami with its annual Japan Society Award in an evening crafted especially to honor one of Japan and the world’s most exceptional men of letters.

Award Presentation
The evening begins with Japan Society President & CEO Joshua W. Walker, Ph.D. presenting the Japan Society Award to Haruki Murakami on stage. This award honors luminous individuals who have brought the U.S. and Japan closer together through their artistic, business or governmental work. Past award recipients have included Akira Kurosawa, Bobby Valentine, Caroline Kennedy, George Takei, Hideki Matsui, Mansaku Nomura, Nobu Matsuhisa, Seiji Ozawa and Yoko Ono.

Haruki Murakami will welcome the audience with Opening Remarks following the Japan Society Award presentation.

An Evening of Music
Following the Japan Society Award presentation, award-winning jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran will take the stage to lead a program of music plucked from Murakami’s own works. Seeded across Murakami’s books are over 300 references to songs spanning from Beethoven, Schubert, and Mozart to Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Doors. A MacArthur Fellow with decades of accolades, Moran will now bring a curated selection of music from the worlds of Haruki Murakami to life.

Personal Reflections and Selected Passages
Interspersed between Moran and his band, Motoyuki Shibata and Roland Kelts will take the stage. Shibata is one of Japan’s most highly regarded editors and translators and a founding editor of Monkey: New Writing from Japan. Roland Kelts is the Tokyo-based author of Japanamerica, a journalist, scholar and authority on Japanese and Western cultures, and currently a visiting professor at Waseda University, Murakami’s alma mater. Both are long-time friends of Haruki Murakami and will present personal anecdotes about the author, share stories of their times together, and read passages from his works curated as companions to Moran’s music.

Date, Time, and Location
The event will take place at 7 PM on December 11, 2025 at the Town Hall (123 West 43rd Street). A non-profit organization and landmarked building, the Town Hall has presented performances and talks for over 100 years featuring Pearl Buck, Eleanor Roosevelt, James Baldwin, Thích Nhất Hạnh, and Ai Weiwei. Isaac Stern, Glenn Gould, Nina Simone, Ravi Shankar, Bob Dylan, and Whitney Houston all made their concert hall debuts on The Town Hall stage. Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughn, Count Basie, Bill Evans, and the aforementioned Nina Simone have all recorded live concerts at the Town Hall. 

Jason Moran
Jazz pianist, composer, and visual artist Jason Moran (b. 1975 in Houston, TX) earned a degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and was recently inducted into the Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2011-2025 he was  the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center and teaches at the New England Conservatory. Moran has recorded 20 critically acclaimed solo recordings with Blue Note Records and his own label, Yes Records.  He scored the films SELMA and 13th by Ava DuVernay and has composed numerous works for  dance  by  Lines Ballet, Evidence Dance Company and Martha Graham Dance Company. He has collaborated with major artists as Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton and Stan Douglas. His visual art is in the collections of MOMA, SFMOMA, Whitney Museum, Walker Art Center, MFA  Houston and Philadelphia Museum of Art. He recently curated the permanent exhibition Here to Stay for the newly opened Louis Armstrong Center in Queens, NY  and co-curated the exhibition I’ve Seen the Wall: Louis Armstrong on Tour in the GDR 1965 at DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam.

Motoyuki Shibata
Motoyuki Shibata was born in 1954. He translates American literature and runs the literary journal Monkey: New Writing from Japan, both in Japanese and in English. He has translated Paul Auster, Rebecca Brown, Stuart Dybek, Steve Erickson, Brian Evenson, Laird Hunt, Kelly Link and Steven Millhauser, among others. Recent translations include Eric McCormack’s Cloud and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. He is professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo.

Roland Nozomu Kelts
Roland Nozomu Kelts is an award-winning Japanese American journalist, author, editor and scholar. He is best known for his highly acclaimed bestseller, Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US, and the more recent, Blade Runner: Black Lotus. He contributes to numerous media in Japan, the U.S. and Europe, including the BBC, CNN, NHK, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Guardian and The New York Times, and has been a contributing editor to the literary journal Monkey: New Writing from Japan since 2021. He has worked as an author, editor and consultant for publishers in Japan, the UK and the U.S. for over 20 years, and was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard in 2017. He has interviewed and written about Haruki Murakami several times, and is currently a Visiting Professor at Waseda University, Murakami’s alma mater.


*New members who join between September 18–25 will receive a presale code inside their membership confirmation email.

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Photo Credits:
Haruki Murakami Photo Credit – Elena Seibert
Motoyuki Shibata Photo Credit – Eisuke Asaoka
Roland Kelts Photo Credit – Timothy Scott Ralston

The NYC Japanese Literature Series is supported by a grant from the Toshiba International Foundation, and All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., the official airline partner of the series.

Support for cultural programs is provided by Anime NYC; the Sandy Heck Lecture Fund; Faith L. Taylor; and Jean Fan Colson and Daniel Colson.

Japan Society programs are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Japan Society’s 120th anniversary initiatives and related programs are generously supported by Champion Sponsor, MUFG Bank, Ltd.; Advocate Sponsor, Mizuho Americas; and Friend Sponsor, Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas).