Cowboy Bebop is a Japanese neo-noir space Western anime television series which aired on TV Tokyo and Wowow from 1998 to 1999. It was created and animated by Sunrise, led by a production team of director Shinichirō Watanabe, screenwriter Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, mechanical designer Kimitoshi Yamane, and composer Yoko Kanno, who are collectively billed as Hajime Yatate.
Yoko Kanno is a Japanese composer, arranger and music producer of soundtracks for anime series, video games, television dramas and movies. She has written scores for Cowboy Bebop, Terror in Resonance, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Wolf's Rain, Turn A Gundam and Darker than Black. Kanno is a keyboardist and the frontwoman for Seatbelts, who perform many of her compositions.
Shinichirō Watanabe is a Japanese anime television and film director, best known for directing the critically acclaimed and commercially successful anime series Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and Space Dandy. An auteur of the industry, Watanabe's work is characterized by evocative uses of music, mature themes, and the incorporation of multiple genres.
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, known in Japan as Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door, is a 2001 Japanese anime science fiction action film based on the 1998 anime series Cowboy Bebop created by Hajime Yatate. Several staff from the original series worked on the film, including director Shinichirō Watanabe, writer Keiko Nobumoto, character designer/animation director Toshihiro Kawamoto, and composer Yoko Kanno. The Japanese and English voice casts also reprised their roles.
Emily Bindiger is an American singer who is part of the a cappella group the Accidentals. She played the role of Francine in the children's show The Great Space Coaster.
Emily Curtis, a New York City native, is an independent singer/songwriter. She plays guitar, piano, cello, and bass. In 1999, she released Radiate, an independent CD produced by Jamal Ruhe. Her second, eponymous CD was released in 2003.
Seatbelts is a Japanese band led by composer and instrumentalist Yoko Kanno. An international ensemble comprising both a stable lineup of musicians and various collaborators, the band was assembled by Kanno in 1998 to perform the soundtrack music for the Cowboy Bebop anime series. Their repertoire covered and blended many different genres, mainly jazz, but also a wide variety of rock, electronic, funk, blues, orchestral pop and other styles of genres.
Tsuneo Imahori is a Japanese guitarist and composer.
Ilaria Graziano is an Italian singer. She gained popularity with the release of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the subsequent original soundtracks, composed by Yoko Kanno.
Fiction is Yuki Kajiura's first solo album, containing remixes of her previous anime work as well as original songs. The Japanese edition features three bonus songs.
Steve Conte is an American musician, songwriter, guitarist, music producer, and lead singer of the band Steve Conte NYC. He has worked with Japanese composer Yoko Kanno on a variety of anime soundtracks including Wolf's Rain, Cowboy Bebop, RahXephon and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG. He is the former lead guitarist of the New York Dolls.
Mai Yamane is a Japanese singer, known for her work on the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack with Yoko Kanno and for her 1980 hit Tasogare.
FictionJunction is the solo project of Japanese composer Yuki Kajiura featuring guests musicians, mainly singers. Historically, works between Kajiura and a vocalist were referenced by adding the singer's name after "FictionJunction". Although both perform under the FJ title and are collaborations with Kajiura, they are separate projects.
An anime composer is a composer who mainly composes music for anime productions.
Paul Shapiro is a jazz, world, and klezmer saxophonist from New York City.
Josh Roseman is an American jazz trombonist. His nickname is "Mr. Bone". He studied in Newton North High School.
The Cowboy Bebop anime series was accompanied by a number of soundtrack albums composed by Yoko Kanno and Seatbelts, a diverse band Kanno formed to create the music for the series, with a principal focus in jazz. The soundtrack was released in the American market by Victor Entertainment, a subsidiary of JVC Kenwood.
Wakana Ootaki, who goes by the mononymous stage name Wakana, is a Japanese pop singer. She was one of the vocalists of the FictionJunction project started by Yuki Kajiura, and was a core member of the vocal group Kalafina. She is currently signed with Victor Entertainment with a solo career, having released two albums and an EP that have charted on Oricon.
Kids on the Slope is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yuki Kodama. It was serialized in the manga magazine Monthly Flowers from 2007 to 2012, and was published as ten tankōbon volumes by Shogakukan. The series follows Kaoru Nishimi, an introverted high school student who discovers jazz music through his friendship with his delinquent classmate Sentarō Kawabuchi.
The manga series Kids on the Slope and its anime and live-action film adaptations have had various soundtracks and compilations released around them. The music for the series draws from jazz music of the early- to mid-20th century, and prominently features American jazz artists such as Art Blakey and Bill Evans.
