The nickname is derived from "Kithara", an ancient Greek musical instrument in the zither family, and also the term "Kita", which means "north" in Japanese.

[2] The building area covers 8,383,291 m² in total, the number of floors is 3 above ground and 2 underground, and the Hokkaido Engineering Consultants Co., Ltd is the main builder for the concert hall.

[3] The hall is one of the venues of the Pacific Music Festival (PMF), an event started with the idea of Leonard Bernstein in 1990.

1998-1999 Pascal Marsault 1999-2000 Yves Lafargue 2000-2001 Laszlo Fassang (HUNG) 2001-2002 Juan María Pedrero (ESP) 2002-2003 Monica Melcova (SVK) 2003-2004 Jean-Philippe Merckaert (BEL) 2004-2005 Matthieu Magnuszewski 2005-2006 Jens Korndoerfer (GER) 2006-2007 Ghislain Leroy 2007-2008 Sylvain Heili 2008-2009 Cindy Castillo (BEL) 2009-2010 Laurent-Cyprien Giraud 2010-2011 Coralie Amedjkane 2011-2012 Florent Galliere 2012-2013 Maria Magdalena Kaczor

2013-2014 Octavian Saunier 2014-2015 *** 2015-2016 John Walthausen (USA) 2016-2017 Davide Mariano (IT) 2017-2018 Martin Gregorius (POL) 2018-2019 Simon Bollenot 2019-2020 Adam Tabajdi (HUNG)