“MANON” is a dance theater performance, directed and choreographed by Kimiho Hulbert, based on the 18th century French romantic literature masterpiece “Manon Lescaut” (written by Abbé Prévost). Akira Kosemura composed the original score for this production, and this is the two discs soundtrack with more than 80 minutes. This is a love story of Manon, a gil who is as naivete and innocent as the wind, and in the end she will die from the tragic event what she has caused, and Des Grieux, who meets Manon and continues to love her at the mercy of fate. The original scores were composed with a touch of beauty, with fragility, and with some cruelty for this tragic love story, is a response to the couple’s fate in a story. A universal theme ” a joy of life, and a difficulty of living one’s own destiny” exists in the music, which also can be adapted into modern life. In contrast with his previous album “how my heart sings”, a simple and beautiful piano album, which featured more in playing the piano, in this new album consists with varieties in compositions and has different arrangements by featuring many artists; Mika Shirasawa (violin), Haruka Hitomi (cello), Rie Yoshihara (accordion), Izumi Misawa (marimba, percussion), Muneki Takasaka (guitar), Shin Araki (flute), Shaylee (vocal). In addition, it also features some sounds not seen in Akira Kosemura’s previous works, such as electronic sound effects, and noise music, which makes this album a bit different from his previous releases. It is a beautiful piece of work to catch a glimpse of the different side of the composer as a sound artist. Although this is the complete soundtrack for the theater performance “MANON”, including 19 songs, but also the listeners can enjoy the total of eighty minutes of exciting sound experience. * Due to the artist’s intention, this album is released only in CD format. In the whole process, Akira Kosemura created this piece with a thorough aesthetic sense as a suite of sounds.