Yves Bonnefoy evoked “this sound that unites, when words divide”. In this love at first sight between Mieko Miyazaki, a Japanese musician who has been exploring with the complicity of her koto and for three decades the virgin lands of the infinite world of the sensitive, and the Yako Quartet, a fiery young ensemble which has kept its solid classical formation in France an insatiable appetite for research and discovery, the verb is not central. The distinct mother tongues, at first glance barriers to common progress in the heart of things, immediately impose on the quintet a crossing through music, giving back to the word “interbreeding” its first meaning: fruitful union. For each of the five protagonists of this veritable attack on gloom, the cards are thus redistributed; of the pentatonism to which the koto is usually devoted – in its role as a traditional instrument – only subtle evocations remain. Melodies, rhythms and harmonic flavours run through the voices of the quartet, shaking up their classical organization. The result is a lively succession of unexpected soundtracks, in the service of a discourse that is sometimes wild, sometimes dreamy, always resolutely optimistic.