Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Isao Tomita
One of the most renowned electronic music composers in the world, Isao Tomita (冨田 勲; Tomita Isao, April 22, 1932 - ) was born in Tokyo and spent early childhood with his father in China. After returning to Japan, he took private lessons in orchestration and composition while being an art history student at Keio University, Tokyo. He graduated in 1955 and became a full-time composer for television, film and theatre. He composed the theme music for the Japanese Olympic gymnastics team for the 1956 Summer Olympics in Australia.
In the late 1960s, he turned his attention to electronic music after hearing albums by Wendy Carlos in which Wendy performed classical music with Moog synthesizer. Isao acquired a Moog III synthesiser and began building his home studio. He started arranging Claude Debussy's "Snowflakes are Dancing" in 1974, which was a worldwide success. In that year, he also composed music for the Japanese film Last Days of Planet Earth. He often makes use of Klangfarbenmelodie, with synthesizer voices.
He kept on releasing albums, of which the best known are his interesting arrangements of classics, such as Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird, Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Gustav Holst's The Planets, "Grand Canyon", "Bach Fantasy". He gave a big concert in 1984 at the annual contemporary music "Sound Cloud" performance in Linz, Austria called "Mind of the Universe", playing instruments in a glass pyramid suspended over an audience of 80,000 people.
Discography
- Snowflakes are Dancing (1974)
- Firebird Suite (1975)
- Pictures at an Exhibition (1975)
- The Planets (1976)
- Bermuda Triangle (1978)
- Kosmos (1978)
- Daphnis et Chloé (1979)
- Greatest Hits (1980)
- Dawn Chorus - Canon of the Three Stars (1984)
- Nasca Fantasy (1994)
- Bach Fantasy (1996)
External link
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