Kalafina

Yuki Kajiura stands at the center of Kalafina as the anime soundtrack composer who assembled a roster of gifted and striking female vocalists to deliver her distinctive blend of dance-pop and operatic pop material. The group first emerged in connection with the 2008 anime adaptation of the Kara No Kyoukai novels, a project already involving Kajiura; at that time she recruited Wakana Ootaki and Keiko Kubota, both previously associated with FictionJunction, to record the series themes. Their initial release, the 2008 single “Oblivious,” reached the Top Ten and led Sony Music Japan to stage a May 2008 contest drawing thirty thousand applicants in search of two additional members; Hikaru and Maya were chosen, although Maya remained only long enough to appear on the single “sprinter/ARIA,” reportedly because she needed to complete high school, before her official departure in 2009. Moving beyond their Kara No Kyoukai origins, Kalafina issued the Kajiura-penned “Lacrimosa” in 2009, which served as a theme for the series Kuroshitsuji, and later that year unveiled their first studio album, Seventh Heaven, which they promoted at the annual Anime Boston convention. The July 2009 single “Storia” is slated to function as the theme for an NHK historical program.