June 11, 2026 — Kyoto Botanical Gardens.
June 12, 2026 — Nagai Botanical Garden, Osaka.
The flowers photographed during these two early-summer days are presented once again—this time with Sayaka Shoji’s violin in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64.
The music may be the same Mendelssohn, yet when the performer changes, the landscape of the music changes with it.
And strangely enough, the flowers themselves seem to reveal a different expression.
There is extraordinary clarity and intelligence in Sayaka Shoji’s playing.
But beneath that transparency lies something more: an intense inner passion and an uncompromising determination to enter deeply into the heart of the music.
In the first movement, the solo violin emerges almost immediately from silence and begins that unforgettable melody.
One by one, the flowers appear, as though awakened by the sound.
In the second movement, time seems to slow.
The flowers of early summer remain suspended in light, while the violin sings its long, quiet song.
Then comes the finale.
The music suddenly takes flight—brilliant, light, and alive.
From flower to flower.
From Kyoto to Osaka.
The photographs begin to move again through music.
Kyoto Botanical Gardens on June 11, 2026.
Nagai Botanical Garden on June 12, 2026.
What I saw there existed only at that particular moment, under that particular light.
Yet a moment preserved in a photograph can begin to live again when it encounters music.
Mendelssohn through the violin of Sayaka Shoji gives these flowers of early summer another life, another expression.
Photography and music.
A moment and eternity.
A flower eventually falls.
A musical note disappears the instant it is played.
And perhaps that is precisely why both can be so beautiful.
The flowers of Kyoto Botanical Gardens and Nagai Botanical Garden, together with Sayaka Shoji’s Mendelssohn.