About

MatsumoTone is a music project rooted in Nagano, Japan — a mountainous prefecture in central Japan known for the Japanese Alps, hot springs, post-towns of the old Nakasendo road, and a long tradition of craftsmanship in instruments and woodwork.

Each release is built around a place, a season, and a small slice of local history: a 4:47 AM trail on Mt. Norikura, a fireworks night above Lake Suwa, a cassette tape playing in a Karuizawa lounge in 1973. The music is instrumental, mostly mid-tempo, and designed to be played as a soundtrack to a quiet hour.

About this site

This site is the official liner-notes archive for the MatsumoTone project. Every post unfolds the place, the season, and the small histories behind a track. Where possible, each post links out to streaming platforms so listeners can hear the music while reading.

Matsumoto, a music city

Matsumoto (松本) is, by any honest measure, one of Japan’s serious music cities. Since 1992 it has hosted what is now called the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival (formerly the Saito Kinen Festival) — a summer classical music event that draws principal players from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and other major orchestras into a single ensemble that performs in town for two weeks each year. The festival has put 松本 on the world classical map for over three decades.

The city is also the cradle of the Suzuki Method, the violin pedagogy founded here by Shinichi Suzuki and now taught in dozens of countries. And the surrounding Matsumoto-Azumino plain is one of the centres of Japanese acoustic-guitar manufacturing — Morris and Headway and a long list of smaller workshops continue a tradition that goes back to the post-war years.

The city also hosts Ringo Ongaku Sai (林檎音楽祭), an outdoor festival held every September at Alps Park since 2013, drawing leading Japanese rock and indie acts — proof that 松本’s music identity reaches well beyond the classical world that the Ozawa Festival represents.

MatsumoTone exists, in part, because all of this deserves to be better known outside Japan — and because someone who lives among it might as well try.

Where to listen

MatsumoTone is distributed worldwide on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and other major platforms. Streaming links are provided at the bottom of each post.

Contact

For inquiries — press, licensing, collaborations, or simple notes from listeners — please use the contact form.