Portal:Studio Ghibli/Selected biography/2

Cécile Corbel (born 1980, Pont-Croix, Finistère, France) is a French and Breton singer, harpist, and composer. She has released five albums of original music and worked for Studio Ghibli as a composer for its 2010 film, The Borrower Arrietty. Corbel sings in many languages including French, Italian, Breton, and English and has done songs in German, Spanish, Irish, Turkish, and Japanese. Her lifelong partner is songwriter Simon Caby, who is also her co-composer.

In 2005, she released an EP with six tracks, Harpe celtique et chants du monde. After she signed with the record label Keltia Musique, her first studio album was released in 2006. SongBook 1 contained Breton, Welsh, and Irish songs. After this release, she began to go on tour, performing in many countries including Germany, Switzerland, Italy, England, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Netherlands, the United States, Paraguay, and Burma. In 2008, SongBook vol. 2 was released, with the first 10 of the 12 songs composed by Corbel.

After promotion ended for SongBook vol. 2, Cécile still had some promo albums left, so she sent them to people she admired, including one to Studio Ghibli because she had been a fan of their films for years. At the time, The Borrower Arrietty was in pre-production and producer Toshio Suzuki wanted a Celtic-inspired film score. Less than ten days later, she received an email from Studio Ghibli about her CD. The envelope, because it was handwritten, had caught the eye of Suzuki, and he had listened to the CD. He was captivated by Corbel's voice and the sound of the harp, and played the CD for the film's director and Yamaha Music. As a result, she was eventually asked to compose the whole score. This was the first time a non-Japanese composer had worked with the studio.