FREE LECTURE & CONCERT - The Past Can Be Changed: How RADWIMPS Drummer Satoshi Yamaguchi Reclaimed Music Through Neuroscience Research and Voice-Controlled Drums

In this powerful lecture-performance, Satoshi Yamaguchi shares his deeply personal journey after losing the ability to play drums due to Musician’s Dystonia—a career-ending neuromuscular disorder that forced him into silence for nearly a decade. Refusing to give up, he turned to research and technology collaborating globally to better understand the condition. The event culminates in a live performance using a voice-controlled drumming system he co-developed, offering a moving testament to resilience, creativity, and the ways innovation can restore both sound and hope.

About the Speaker: Satoshi Yamaguchi is the drummer of Japanese band RADWIMPS and a Visiting Researcher at Keio University. He began his musical career as a teenager and performed as the drummer of RADWIMPS, a popular Japanese band that gained international acclaim for composing the soundtrack of award-winning anime movie Your Name (Kimi no Na wa). In 2009, he developed Musician's Dystonia, a neurological disorder affecting motor control, and was forced to suspend his drumming career in 2015. In 2021, he began participatory research on dystonia as a Visiting Researcher at Keio University. During a two-month research residency at Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in 2023, he gained insights that led to the 2024 co-development of VXD, a voice-controlled drumming system, with Yamaha. In 2025, he  launched a solo tour, The Past Can Be Changed, returning to live performance for the first time in a decade.