Session Report: violist Hiyoli Togawa on recording her new album, Children!

When I met Hiyoli Togawa to talk about her latest recording project, I didn’t think we would spend more than 40 minutes on our interview. More than two enthralling hours later, we bade each other goodbye after a delightful chat that touched upon more subjects that could even be mentioned here. Both being based in Berlin, we agreed on German as lingua franca for our conversation, but Togawa, who was born and grew up in Germany, is equally fluent in Japanese (her father’s native language) and English (through her Australian mother). Unsurprisingly with such a multinational background, thoughts of homeland and belonging are prominent in her mind (for instance, she is curious to learn what lured her Argentinian interviewer to settle in Berlin), and we came back to these subjects once and again during our talk…