For the upcoming album Dream Songs: The Essential Joe Hisaishi, a music video of composer Joe Hisaishi playing the song “One Summer’s Day” on the piano has been released.
Hisaishi was born on December 6, 1950, in Nagano, Japan, with the birth name Mamoru Fujisawa. Beginning his music career by learning violin at the age four, Fujisawa attended Kunitachi College of Music in 1969 to major in music composition.
For his first professsional job, music was composed for an anime series called Gyatoruzu. Fujisawa would then continue to compose for more anime such as Hajime Ningen Gyatoruz and Robokko Beeton.
As Fujisawa was establishing himself in both the music and animation industry, the alias Joe Hisaishi was formed. The alias is inspired by Quincy Jones, a musician and producer.
Now under his alias, Hisaishi released MKWAJU, his first album of art music. Following MKWAJU, his electropop-minimalist album Information was released.
A year after the release of Information, Hisaishi was recommended by publisher Tokuma to compose for Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, an animated film by Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki.
With iconic works such as Castle in the Sky, Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service, Studio Ghibli is undoubtedly one of the best animation studios to ever to grace the world.
Hisaishi has composed for almost all of Studio Ghibli’s films. One of Ghibli’s animated film that Hisaishi composed for is Spirited Away, with “One Summer’s Day” being track number one of the film’s Original Sound Track.
