Kalafina
Japanese band

Kalafina (カラフィナ) is a Japanese vocal group formed by composer Yuki Kajiura in 2007, mainly to perform theme songs for the anime The Garden of Sinners, but later expanded to include many other theme songs for other anime shows and films including the Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Black Butler, The Heroic Legend of Arslan and Fate/stay night franchises. They released five albums that have charted in the top 10 for Oricon. Kalafina disbanded in 2019, but regrouped on October 3, 2024.
History
The group first appeared in January 2008 with two original members from Yuki Kajiura's FictionJunction project, Wakana Ōtaki and Keiko Kubota, whose membership was not confirmed until the first Dream Port 2008 concert held on April 29, 2008. In May 2008, it was announced that two more vocalists, Maya Toyoshima and Hikaru Masai, would be added to the project. Kalafina moved to the Sacra Music record label under Sony Music Entertainment Japan in April 2017. In 2009, Toyoshima left the group, resulting in a trio. In an interview with the group at Anime Central, the concept of Kalafina differs from FictionJunction in that Kajiura does not perform on stage with the singers, but serves as an off-stage producer and songwriter.
With Yuki Kajiura leaving her agency Space Craft Produce in 2018, news agency Oricon reported that the group was expected to continue even with Kajiura leaving. Space Craft has further announced that concerts and 10th anniversary film's plans would still move forward.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kalafina” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.