Human Universe

As a science and engineering graduate, and an internationally renowned pianist, Hayato Sumino belongs to that relatively rare group of people who feel at home in both arts and sciences. His debut album amounts to something rarer still. There is music by Debussy, Fauré, Purcell, Bach and more (many in beautiful reimaginings), alongside new works inspired by music from the past, and original pieces that speak to the heart. Each track is infused with genuine beauty and a profound sense of wonder—Sumino’s playing owns a special quality, hard to define yet ever present in its tenderness, its reverence for sound and, above all, its emotional honesty. No wonder, when you consider the multiple strands of influence that belong to Hayato Sumino’s compelling backstory. “When I was young, I was scared to mix classical music with other genres,” he tells Apple Music. “That’s why I used a different name, Cateen, for my YouTube videos. I didn’t even show my face at first! But now I think it’s one of my strengths, and people find it interesting. Because nobody does that thing of playing classical music, and of improvising and composing music in all these different styles. I always wanted to do something different.” Although Sumino began playing piano at the age of three, making music took second place to his studies in computer science. He gained a master’s degree from the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, before relocating to Paris to pursue postgraduate research in music information processing and artificial intelligence at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM). Home videos of Studio Ghibli and Super Mario hits became an outlet for Sumino’s keyboard skills, and bagged a heavyweight social media following. His breakthrough as a classical performer came in 2021 at the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, where his first-round performance enchanted the audience and has since registered over six million YouTube views online. “I always feel, when I play, as if I’m speaking,” he observes. “I’m not a very talkative person, but I can be more ‘talkative’ when I’m playing piano somehow. And when I listen to a legendary pianist’s recording, let’s say of Rachmaninoff playing, it sounds really like natural talking. That’s what I always want to do on the piano.” Thanks to his subtle touch and fluid phrasing, he has also mastered the art of producing a singing tone on piano. “I think the thing is, how can I feel the piano is part of my body. It has to be natural. The sound has to come from my body, so I try to connect with the piano as much as possible. There’s so many techniques for that. But how can I say? It’s difficult to explain. Almost from birth, I do it naturally, instinctively.” Sumino’s feeling for sound colours and their power to provoke a multitude of emotional responses may be innate. But he cultivated both during his schooldays by arranging big band numbers, classical symphonic works and movie soundtracks. His own compositions almost always start life as improvisations, from which he develops the strongest ideas. “For Human Universe, I wanted the piece to begin with 11 beats. So the concept came first, then I improvised on it. And the three Nocturnes are based on my improvisations in different cities around the world: ‘Pre Rain’ was composed in South Korea in winter—it was very cold, half snowing, half raining, so the piece is kind of like that; ‘After Dawn’ comes from my hometown in Japan, where I saw the sun rising while I was jet-lagged; and I improvised ‘Once in a Blue Moon’ in the South of France, in the deep countryside.” Grand and upright pianos find a home on Human Universe. Both instruments feature on Fauré’s In Paradisum and in Sumino’s arrangement of Ravel’s Boléro, with felt placed between some of the upright’s strings and hammers to modify their sound. “As a scientific researcher, you’re always surveying what people have done before and trying to find something new,” notes Sumino. “And now I am a musician, my mind is influenced by what I experienced when I was a researcher, trying to find something new based on work from the past. For me, when I express music, I always think about how I can express something more than just ordinary human feelings. “The album’s title has two meanings. It’s about the human in the universe and the universe in the human. I wanted it to express my inner universe. I hope listeners feel like they’re taken to a different world, something they cannot feel in their daily lives.”