Hiroshi Yoshimura

Hiroshi Yoshimura
Background information
Birth name	Hiroshi Yoshimura (Japanese:吉村弘)
Born	(1940-10-22)October 22, 1940 Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
Died	October 23, 2003(2003-10-23) (aged 63)
Genres	Ambient minimal environmental electronic
Occupations	Composer songwriter
Instrument(s)	Piano, keyboard, Yamaha DX7, Yamaha TX7, Yamaha FB-01
Years active	1972–2003

Hiroshi Yoshimura (吉村弘, Yoshimura Hiroshi, 22 October 1940 – 23 October 2003) was a Japanese musician and composer. He is considered a pioneer of ambient music in Japan. His music lies mostly in the minimalist genre of kankyō ongaku, or environment music—soft electronic melodies infused with the sounds of nature: babbling brooks, steady rain, and morning birds. However, not all Yoshimura's work included nature sounds. His album Green (1986) only contained them in the United States release, as they were excluded in the Japanese version.

Early life

Hiroshi Yoshimura was born in Yokohama, Kanagawa in 1940. He started to learn piano at the age of 5. He graduated from Waseda School of Letters, Arts and Sciences II in 1964. He was inspired by the Fluxus movement and the work of Harry Partch and Erik Satie.

Career

He started the computer music group "Anonyme" in 1972. The 70's saw Yoshimura heavily inspired by Brian Eno, who had a similar minimalist ambient style. In 1978, he was commissioned by the NHK to compose the piece "Alma's Cloud".

In addition to solo performances and improvisational music, he performed production performance and sound objects, environmental music containing graphic design and sound design, visual poetry, and worked on sound design business in collaboration with TOA. He also made music for galleries, museums, building spaces and train stations. He was at the forefront of environmental music. He worked as a part-time lecturer in the Industrial Design Department at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Chiba and at the Music Design Department of Kunitachi College of Music. He held workshops on citizen participation in museums.

Death

Yoshimura died in 2003 after battling skin cancer.

Legacy

In 2017, Yoshimura, as well as other ambient Japanese musicians, received a resurgence due to changes to the YouTube algorithm. In 2019, the song "Blink", from Yoshimura's debut album, was selected for compilation album Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990. In 2020, Light in the Attic Records re-issued Green.

His music has received much critical acclaim. In 2018, Crack Magazine selected his albums Green and Music For Nine Post Cards as the number 1 and number 7th most essential Japanese ambient albums, respectively. Malcolm Standing for Demo Magazine referred to Yoshimura as "one of the most influential and prolific of the artists to come out of Japan’s ambient renaissance". Tom Moon of NPR noted Yoshimura as "one of the revered pioneers of Japanese electronic music".

Discography

• Music for Nine Post Cards (1982)
• Pier & Loft (1983)
• A・I・R (Air In Resort) (1984)
• Soundscape 1: Surround (1986)
• Green (1986)
• 静けさの本 (Static) (1988)
• 吉村弘の耳 「音の島」 (Hiroshi Yoshimura's Ear "Sound Island") (1992)
• Wet Land (1993)
• Face Music (1994)
• 環境演出音 (Environmental Sound) (1995)
• Quiet Forest (クワイエット・フォレスト) (1998)
• Four Post Cards (2004)
• Soft Wave For Automatic Music Box (2005) (His early work, published after death)
• Flora 1987 (2006) (Posthumous compilation album)