

Joe Hisaishi





Joe Hisaishi was born on December 6, 1950, in Nagano. He started his career as a composer of modern music when he was still a student at the Kunitachi Collage of Music. At that time, he was into minimalist music. He released his first album, "Information" in 1982.



In 1983, he was recommended by a record company to create the Image Album for Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, which was being made into a movie. Miyazaki was so impressed with the Image Album that he often played it during the movie production. Although the soundtrack of Nausicaa was to be composed by a certain "famous" composer, Isao Takahata (the producer of Nausicaa) and Miyazaki strongly recommended that Hisaishi should do the soundtrack as well. The rest is history.



Hisaishi also composed the beautiful and unforgettable music for Laputa, Kiki, Porco Rosso, Mononoke Hime, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle. His music played a very important role in these movies. He has also released many other albums, and he worked as the executive producer at and wrote the theme song for the 1998 Nagano Paralympics.



His name, "Hisaishi Joe" (family name first) came from "Quincy Jones". The kanji for "Hisaishi" could be read as "Kuishi", which is close to the Japanese pronunciation of "Quincy", and "Joe" of course came from "Jones". Hisaishi himself chose this name, when he needed a stage name.



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