Yuki Kajiura

/wiki/Yuki Kajiuracreator
"I have a love of songs that get me out of the quotidian. I like operas. Operas are completely in their own world, aren’t they? Within the sanctuary of the opera house, they weave otherworldly spaces for four hours. I love such songs with vistas into other worlds―-songs that seem to distort the size of my rooms when I listen to them. When I make melodies in my own little way, the lyrics end up that way. Lyrics like “I bought three radishes and found them cheap～♪” aren't relevant to my interests! It goes like “A traveler searching for eternity～♪” instead."
—Yuki Kajiura

A Genre Busting Japanese composer, music producer, impresario, and ethnomusicologist, born in Tokyo in 1965 but raised in The Bonn Republic. After returning to Japan as a teenager, she worked as an Office Lady before quitting in 1992. She first came to musical prominence as one half of the group See-Saw with Chiaki Ishikawa in the 1990s, and established herself as a solo composer with the seminal soundtracks to Noir and .hack and the musical Shooting-Star Lullaby (as well as at least some of the Japanese institution that is Sakura Taisen), subsequently spending many years as the 'house composer' for Bee Train.

Widely considered second only (or equal) to Yoko Kanno as an Anime soundtrack composer, her Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly sensibilities, unusual way of life, and undeniable talent have invited comparisons to such figures as Ennio Morricone and Ludwig Van Beethoven--amazing compliments, considering that she lists her favourite period in music (modern music, anyway) as The Eighties (Nostalgia Filter may be at work here considering that she's a member of Gen X) and her favourite artists as including New Order and Depeche Mode. But then, just because you like something doesn't necessarily mean that your own work is anything like it.

Indeed, her music isn't, as a whole, 'like' anything else in particular. It ranges from Ominous Constructed Language Chanting (Madlax) to Psycho Strings (Kara no Kyoukai) to sweet pop music (many a Mai Franchise Image Song) to lushly instrumented suites (Noir) to whatever her band Kalafina is supposed to be. El Cazador de la Bruja is notable for having shown Kajiura's work in ethnomusicology and the musical traditions of Latin America and the American West, evoking musicians from Daniel Alomia Robles to Johnny Cash and Frankie 'Old Leather Lungs' Laine. She was for a time an impresario for the innovative pop group ALI Project, and brought them into the Noir production.

All-in-all, she's generally thought of as a unique, still relatively young musician of great talent, worthy of her widely-perceived status as The Rival to Yoko Kanno (although they don't seem to bear each other any ill-will at all).

Her closest western equivalent is Hans Zimmer, who also bears a penchant of crossing high-tech modernity with epic opera.

Yuki Kajiura can be heard in:
Yuki Kajiura provides examples of the following tropes:
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