New album 

Trouble In The East Records,   September 25, 2026

Following her solo album Tears of a Cloud (Trouble In The East Records, 2023), the Jazzpreis Berlin 2023 and the German Jazz Prize 2024, Taiko Saito now presents Virtual Life, the new album by her long-standing duo KOKO with pianist Niko Meinhold.

Saito and Meinhold have been playing together as KOKO since 2002. Their music has developed through a continuous exploration of sound, improvisation and composition, with particular attention to the acoustic possibilities of their instruments.

The sonic exploration of Tears of a Cloud — through different playing techniques, mallets, resonance and silence — continues in Virtual Life, now taking place within the interaction of two musicians. What Saito explores through the sound of her instruments meets Meinhold’s piano, creating a constantly evolving dialogue.

KOKO’s first album, KOKO, was released on Pirouet Records in 2006, followed by Live in Bogotá in 2014. In 2017, Saito and Meinhold expanded the duo into the trio Kokotob with clarinetist and bass clarinetist Tobias Schirmer, releasing Flying Heart on Clean Feed Records.

With Virtual Life, KOKO returns to its original duo formation — more than twenty years after the beginning of their musical collaboration.