Lori Nicole used the piece for Denis Ten first. I love the feeling of central Asia.
Daisuke Tahakahashi's 2011-2012 SP to In the Garden of Souls by VAS, which has middle eastern influence.
These are two of my all-time favourite men's programs.
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I apologise, this is OT, as the OP has specified that this thread is not supposed to be about Japanese/East Asian music, but since this discussion has come up anyway:
I am a huge fan of Riley Lee, the Australian-born grand master of the shakuhachi (his music on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/@RileyLeeMusic/playlists is stunning, he plays both Japanese and other culture's music exquisitely and the concert he did in my home town years ago is one of my most treasured memories). I am also a massive fan of video game and Asian (Japanese and Korean horror, Chinese fantasy) soundtracks - I would personally
adore someone to skate to Ghost of Tsushima, which was co-composed by Shigeru Umebayashi who composed the soundtrack Seimei came from, as well as House of Flying Daggers which has been used by some skaters) and think that Asian film video and TV soundtracks are a source of fresh music that comes from other cultures and yet can be accessible to Western ears. And there are plenty of orchestral suites of media - including video - composers' work in many countries, Japan included (hey, there are whole concerts of Yuzuru's music! so composers like Umebayashi and Kenji Kawai and others wouldn't be hard to adapt.)
I agree with most of this (and thank you for mentioning Riley Lee – I didn't know him, but just listened to a few of his recordings and am quite taken with them
).
Classical concerts, specifically dedicated to figure skating music have been common in Japan for quite some time. (Just recently we had “Kanako Murakami’s classical figure skating concert”.)
That said, I don’t think that most video game and movie/anime soundtracks even need to be adapted or heavily re-rearranged to be suitable for figure skating (other than of course editing the pieces to fit the program structure and required length).
Since you brought him up – I adore Kenji Kawai’s style and his music is already well represented in Japanese figure skating.
Rika Hongo’s “Reawakening “ program (from the “Ghost in the shell” soundtrack) (
https://youtu.be/EdbOJtfCvX8?t=33) or the use of “The Ballade of Puppets “ (also from “Ghost in the shell”) for the opening of Daisuke Takahashi’s show “Ice Explosion” 2023 (
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U_sGR50fVF14Xflix7PzIkqduBKC7hkg/view / from 5:20) both demonstrate that Kawai’s music works superbly in the context of figure skating.
What’s even more awesome is that Kawai
composed all of the original music for “Hyoen 2019 – Like the moonlight” (
source) and was also responsible for the re-arrangements of “Yuzu’s”* songs and composed additional bits for the latest Hyoen installment. (Here he is in the studio with director Amon Miyamoto (who was later replaced by Kikunojo Onoe), recording guitar parts for “Hyoen 2024 – The Miracle of the Cross Star”:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C54x31Ppf8-/)
* pop duo from Yokohama, whose songs were used to tell the story of Hyoen 2024
What even is authentic Japanese music? Anything composed before 1853? Personally for me it's 90% crappy pop music. Video game soundtracks are probably more authentic to modern Japanese culture than shakuhachi.
If we're looking for the use of actual traditional Japanese music – with origins dating back to the Edo period – in competitive skating, there’s Muramoto’s/Takahashi’s “Soran bushi” RD (in a modern arrangement of course), which was another fan favourite.
