midori jaeger

London-based cellist & singer midori jaeger announces first of two EPs with earthy first single "dark green".

London-based cellist, singer and songwriter midori jaeger has announced details of new EP ‘(Un)planted', set for release on March 9^th – the first part of a double EP, the counterpart due to follow later in 2026. Along with the announcement, today she has shared the earthy first single “dark green”.

 Unable to visit her family and dying grandmother in Japan during lockdown, and forced to reexamine her relationship with London in the liminal period, midori transmuted critical questions of heritage, identity and belonging into clarifying and calcifying songwriting. The result is the forthcoming double EP.

“dark green,” the opening track  from first EP ‘(Un)Planted’ is about the general life force that animates everything. A sexual energy, as well as a driving, uniting one, akin to nature itself. Locked onto a purplish, convulsing groove, jaeger’s melodies sound bone-fresh, her vitalised feelings cresting the top-notes of her pizzicato.

On "dark green", as on the rest of the EPs, jaeger finds in essential biological facts — pulse, breath, the greenness of growth — a comforting collective reality. All of us, no matter how far we are from the ones we love, are all on the same cycle of birth to death, breathing our way through life as one. 

On "dark green", midori is heard playing cello, bass synth, synth, with vibraphone, drums and guitar by close friends.

From the ground, the tree. From the tree, the wood. From the wood, the cello. From the cello, a human—wrapping herself around it.

Dug from the soil and shaped into song, the cello is the most human of all instruments. It vibrates at a grounding frequency and rumbles throughout the body. Its player doesn't merely clasp it by the neck but tightly swaddles it.

For London-based musician midori jaeger, who has received cosigns from Adrianne Lenker and Moses Sumney, among others, this intimate bond has been one of her only constants amid a life marked by incessant uprooting and replanting.

Born in Japan and relocated to the UK at five, she later returned to Tokyo at sixteen before settling in London to study music full-time two years later. Each move was a replanting, each city a new soil.

midori began playing the cello at eight, a decision that would entwine her identity with the instrument. Classically trained at the Royal Academy of Music, midori eventually diverged from the rigid traditions she was schooled in.

"Classical training made me feel quite insecure. I started feeling like, what's the point in me practising nine hours a day to just play this as well as someone else who can already do it? I kind of want to do something that only I could do."

she says.

There is no better descriptor for midori’s work: something only she could do. That insistence on personal expression defines her two latest EPs — her largest, most comprehensive, and most arresting works yet.

Each song came quickly into being during the immediate aftermath of a long-term relationship, while Jaeger still lived in the bedroom she shared with her ex. After a gestational period, she later recorded the EPs over ten intense days in Lisbon, playing cello, bass synth, synth, and cavaquinho, with drums by a close friend. Every note reflects a recalibration of roots — unplanting old certainties and replanting fresh truths through incandescent emotion and visceral groove.

Live dates

Nov 20 - London, World Heartbeat

Dec 8 - London, Servant's Jazz Quarters