Yoko Kanno

Yoko Kanno has achieved a level of renown rarely seen by female, let alone Japanese, composers. Active since the late ‘80s, Kanno’s earliest work was for video game soundtracks. She scored her first anime series in 1994, and attained global name recognition in 1998 with her work on “Cowboy Bebop”.

Beyond her soundtrack work, Kanno was for many years the producer of Maaya Sakamoto, single-handedly composing the singer’s first four albums. She is an accomplished pianist, and she released her debut solo album Song to Fly in 1998.