Afters years in development, the closely-watched TENORI-ON instrument from Toshio Iwai was officially launched in London by Yamaha last night. Noted game and film composer Gary Kibler was there, and he’s back with lots of juicy details, from the origin of the instrument’s conception to details on its launch and even a link to a PDF manual.. He’s also put loads of videos up for us on YouTube. -Ed.

Yamaha hosted an event last night in the heart of London’s Soho district to celebrate their official launch in the UK of what’s been described as a "revolutionary hands-on instrument that seamlessly fuses lights, sounds and music". The TENORI-ON is a unique handheld performance controller designed by Toshio Iwai, an established interactive media artist and designer, that has taken a full six years to go from initial concept to final production. Its basic makeup is a 16×16 matrix of LED buttons that not only provide the control interface to its 16 layers, 256 preset tones, and 6 sequence/loop modes, but also displays in lights what is often a stunning visual feedback loop on whatever is being output by the device. The device is planned only to be sold in the UK presently with a list price of £599 (approx. $1200 USD)

The highlight of the stage presentations was this first solo performance by Toshio:

Below is a short video interview with Toshio (he begins with signing my "Electroplankton"
DS game that he had designed earlier for Nintendo).

Here is the link to this and other photos I took at the event.

Peter Peck, the Marketing Manager for Yamaha, got up on stage just before the performance segment to make a few announcements, including some official details on the launch of the product: