Isao Tomita

This is the 86th post in our Musician of the Day series.



Isao Tomita was born in 1932 in Tokyo, Japan. He took classes on composition and orchestration while attending Keio University Tokyo. He graduated in 1955 and then became a full time composer for television, film and theater.

In 1965 he wrote the theme song for Osamu Tezuka's animated TV series Jangaru Taitei (Jungle Emperor), released in the USA as Kimba the White Lion.

It wasn't until the late 1960s that he began experimenting with electronic music. It was after hearing albums by Wendy Carlos in which she performs classical music with a Moog Synthesizer. Isao purchased his own Moog II Synthesizer and began arranging Claude Debussy's pieces for it.

In 1974 he released Snowflakes are Dancing which became a worldwide success. He continued to arrange classical pieces for the synthesizer as well as create his own pieces and he released more albums. His most popular songs were always the synthesized classics.

Throughout this time he continued to write and compose for television and film only now the synthesizer was being used in his compositions.

In 1984 he released Canon of the Three Stars which was composed of classical pieces renamed for astronomical objects. "The Plasma Symphony Orchestra" is something he credits himself and is a computer synthesizer process using the wave forms of electromagnetic emanations from various stars and constellations for the sonic textures of this album.

His synthesizer score featuring acoustic soloists for the 2002 film The Twilight Samurai won the 2003 Japanese Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Music.

He continues to compose his unique style of music and revamp classical music in a way that reaches an entirely different generation of listeners.

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