Joe Hisaishi started producing, playing, and composing contemporary music for innumerable concerts during his college days in Kunitachi Music School, where he majored in composing. He released his first album, Information, in 1982. Starting with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds, he has composed the soundtracks for many films including Sonatine, The Water Traveler, Kids Return, Princess Mononoke, Hanabi and Spirited Away. He has won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Music five times ? three times in succession from 1992 to 1994, and then in 1999 for Hanabi and 2000 for Kikujiro. He also received the 48th Newcomer Award in 1997 from the Ministry of Education (Public Entertainment Section) and many other music awards, and is now a revered figure in the Japanese movie industry.
Hisaishi has released many solo albums including Piano Stories, My Lost City, Works I, Works II, and Shoot the Violist. He also gives concerts in a wide variety of genres, from solo piano recitals to acoustic ensembles and symphonic concerts with orchestras. He received much acclaim for the job he did as the executive producer of the Nagano Winter Paralympics held in March 1998, an assignment that involved directing the opening and closing ceremonies, and all cultural events.
Hisaishi was very busy on a number of fronts in 2001, producing the music for Takeshi Kitano’s Brother and Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, and serving as executive producer of the Night Fantasia 4 Movement at the Japan Expo in Fukushima 2001, directing both the visuals and music for what was the first fully digital movie to be produced in Japan. With his film Quartet, which received excellent reviews at the Montreal Film Festival and was released nationwide on October 6, he made his debut as a film director in addition to writing both the music and script. Another achievement forhim in 2001 was his first ever soundtrack for a foreign film, Le Petit Poucet (a StudioCanal production directed by Olivier Dahan), released around the same time. As a performer too, he embarked on a nationwide tour with an orchestra from October, and the concert he gave in Korea was also a huge success.
In 2002 Hisaishi plans to release Encore, an album of piano covers of his own compositions.
from http://www.joehisaishi.com/
