This is a pre-release single from "Café Après-midi Meets Studio Ghibli," a compilation of newly recorded Ghibli song covers featuring 12 super-talented artists, themed around "the happiness of afternoon coffee," supervised and selected by Toru Hashimoto (SUBURBIA), with artwork by Jiro Fujita (FJD) and mastering by Calm! The Ghibli song performed by Nobuyuki Nakajima, a rare musician/pianist who has composed music for numerous Japanese films, television dramas, anime, and advertisements, and who is now based in Paris after meeting Jane Birkin, and also works as a music director for orchestras and productions around the world, is a cover of Aoi Teshima's "Sayonara no Natsu," the theme song from Goro Miyazaki's 2011 film "From Up on Poppy Hill." In this version, the poignant melody and tense orchestral arrangement of the original composition by Koichi Sakata are deliberately performed as a piano solo. The tempo is slower than the original, and the simple yet meaningful touch of each note evokes a wonderful feeling of strange tenderness amidst the tension. The solitary and melancholic sound world, which immerses the listener and makes the performer's figure seem to emerge, is a noble and exquisite gift from a superb keyboardist. It is heavenly music that gently seeps into the heart.