Nobuo Uematsu is a Japanese composer and keyboardist best known for his contributions to the Final Fantasy video game series by Square Enix. A self-taught musician, he began playing the piano at the age of twelve, with English singer-songwriter Elton John as one of his biggest influences.
Yoko Shimomura is a Japanese composer and pianist primarily known for her work in video games such as the Kingdom Hearts series. She graduated from the Osaka College of Music in 1988 and began working in the video game industry by joining Capcom the same year. She wrote music for several games there, including Final Fight, Street Fighter II, and The King of Dragons.
Hiroki Kikuta is a Japanese composer and game designer. His major works are Secret of Mana, Trials of Mana, Soukaigi, and Koudelka, for which he also acted as producer and concept designer. He has composed music for seven other games, and worked as a concept designer in addition to composer for the unreleased MMORPG Chou Bukyo Taisen. He became interested in music at an early age, but earned a degree in Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Cultural Anthropology from Kansai University. He spent the next few years working first as a manga illustrator, then as a composer for anime series, before coming to work for Square in 1991.
James Hannigan is a BAFTA Award winning composer, sound designer, producer, and conference founder. His composing credits include the bestselling, full-cast audio adaptations of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman; entries in the Harry Potter, Command & Conquer, Dead Space, Warhammer, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, RuneScape, Evil Genius, EA Sports and Theme Park video game series; Discworld, the Audie Award winning Alien dramas directed by Dirk Maggs (2016–2019), Unseen Academicals, BBC Radio 4's adaptations of Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens, Neverwhere, and more. His music has been heard in numerous television shows, such as the BBC's Top Gear, Amazon's The Grand Tour, Disney's The World According to Jeff Goldblum, BBC America's Primeval, and his other credits include Freelancer, Privateer 2: The Darkening, Space Hulk and other games, television shows, commercials and installations.
Hitoshi Sakimoto is a Japanese composer and sound producer. He is best known for scoring the video games Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII, though he has composed soundtracks for over 80 other games. Sakimoto first played music and video games in elementary school and began composing music professionally in 1988. He worked at the video game company Square from 1997 to 2002, leaving in order to found the music and sound production company Basiscape.
The Symphonic Game Music Concerts are a series of award-winning orchestral video game music concerts first performed in 2003 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany, notable for being the longest running and the first of their kind outside Japan. They are produced by Thomas Böcker and performed by various orchestras conducted by Andy Brick (2003–2007), Arnie Roth, Niklas Willén and Eckehard Stier.
Jonne Valtonen is a Finnish composer, arranger and orchestrator. He is renowned for his contributions in the field of demoscene and tracker music, under the name Purple Motion, and with Future Crew.
Final Fantasy is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and owned by Square Enix that includes video games, motion pictures, and other merchandise. The series began in 1987 as an eponymous role-playing video game developed by Square, spawning a video game series that became the central focus of the franchise. The music of the Final Fantasy series refers to the soundtracks of the Final Fantasy series of video games, as well as the surrounding medley of soundtrack, arranged, and compilation albums. The series' music ranges from very light background music to emotionally intense interweavings of character and situation leitmotifs.
Video Games Live (VGL) is a concert series created by Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall. The concerts consist of segments of video game music performed by a live orchestra with video footage and synchronized lighting and effects, as well as several interactive segments with the audience. Incorporated in 2002, Video Games Live has performed over 500 shows internationally.
Kow Otani is a Japanese composer. He is best known for creating the soundtracks for the Heisei Gamera trilogy, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, and Shadow of the Colossus.
PLAY! A Video Game Symphony was a concert series that featured music from video games performed by a live orchestra. The concerts from 2006 to 2010 were conducted by Arnie Roth. From 2010, Andy Brick took the position of principal conductor and music director. Play! was replaced by the Replay: Symphony of Heroes concert series.
The music of the video game Final Fantasy XII was composed primarily by Hitoshi Sakimoto. Additional music was provided by Masaharu Iwata and Hayato Matsuo, who also orchestrated the opening and ending themes. Former regular series composer Nobuo Uematsu's only work for this game was "Kiss Me Good-Bye", the theme song sung by Angela Aki. The Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack was released on four Compact Discs in 2006 by Aniplex. A sampling of tracks from the soundtrack was released as an album entitled Selections from Final Fantasy XII Original Soundtrack, and was released in 2006 by Tofu Records. Additionally, a promotional digital album titled The Best of Final Fantasy XII was released on the Japanese localization of iTunes for download only in 2006. "Kiss Me Good-Bye" was released by Epic Records as a single in 2006, and Symphonic Poem "Hope", the complete music from the game's end credits, was released by Hats Unlimited the same year. An abridged version of the latter piece, which originally accompanied a promotional video for the game, was included in the official soundtrack album. An album of piano arrangements, titled Piano Collections Final Fantasy XII, was released by Square Enix in 2012.
The Sydney University Symphony Orchestra (SUSO) is the premier orchestra on the main campus of the University of Sydney.
Inon Zur is an Israeli-American composer of soundtracks for film, television, and video games. Throughout his career, he has composed music for dozens of video games, and other projects, including Dragon Age, EverQuest, Fallout, Prince of Persia, Star Trek, the Syberia series, and Starfield. Well-known film trailer music he's contributed to include Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Hobbit, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. He has received numerous nominations—including three BAFTAs—and has won a number of awards, which include: an Emmy Award and two Game Audio Network Guild Awards, the first in 2004 for Best Original Instrumental Track for Men of Valor and another in 2009 for Best Interactive Score for Crysis. Received two Hollywood Music in Media Awards in 2009 for Best Original Song for Dragon Age: Origins and in 2019 for Best Original Score/Song for The Elder Scrolls: Blades.
Hiroaki Yura is a Japanese violinist, and the founder and artistic director of the Eminence Symphony Orchestra in Sydney, Australia. He was educated at The Scots College in Bellevue Hill. He is currently the CEO of Creative Intelligence Arts.
Hayato Matsuo is a Japanese music composer and orchestrator who primarily does work in video games and anime. He has worked on games such as Front Mission 3, Final Fantasy XII, the Shenmue series, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Hellsing Ultimate. He graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 1991 and began working with composer Koichi Sugiyama as an assistant.
Video Game Orchestra (VGO) is a Boston-based project that performs its own "rockestral" arrangements of video game music with a rock band, vocals, and orchestra. The project was created by Shota Nakama, a Boston-based producer from Okinawa, Japan. Comparative to the other existing major video game concert acts, which mostly focus on the pure orchestral performances, the rock band element is the core essence of the VGO. Their concerts are presented as a rock show with entertaining audience engagement and improvised solos.
Final Fantasy is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and owned by Square Enix that includes video games, motion pictures, and other merchandise. The original Final Fantasy video game, published in 1987, is a role-playing video game developed by Square, spawning a video game series that became the central focus of the franchise. The primary composer of music for the main series was Nobuo Uematsu, who single-handedly composed the soundtracks for the first nine games, as well as directing the production of many of the soundtrack albums. Music for the spin-off series and main series games beginning with Final Fantasy X was created by a variety of composers including Masashi Hamauzu, Naoshi Mizuta, Hitoshi Sakimoto, and Kumi Tanioka, as well as many others.
Thomas Böcker is a German producer. He is the founder of Merregnon Studios and creative director of his orchestral music projects Merregnon and Game Concerts.
Masaharu Iwata is a Japanese video game composer. In high school his musical projects included composing on a synthesizer and playing in a cover band. After graduating from high school he joined Bothtec as a composer. He composed the soundtrack to several games there, beginning with 1987's Bakusou Buggy Ippatsu Yarou. After Bothtec was merged into Quest Corporation, he left to become a freelance composer.
