Joe Hisaishi

My favorite Japanese musician is Joe Hisaishi, the talented composer who created the music for Hayao Miyazaki's most memorable films, including My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and the latest Studio Ghibli work, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. Born in Nagano Prefecture as Mamoru Fujisawa, he discovered his love of music at the age of 5 when he started taking violin lessons. After graduating from music college in 1969, he began his career as a composer, taking advantage of the international attention being paid to Japanese musicians like Ryuichi Sakamoto's Yellow Magic Orchestra. As his career started to take off, Mamoru decided to take a new name based on an American musician he respected a lot, Quincy Jones, using an alternative reading for kanji characters he assigned to represent the singer's name to come up with Joe Hisaishi. (I swear, I am not making this up.) In addition to his worldwide fame as the composer of the Studio Ghibli music, Joe Hisaishi is constantly in demand by movie directors like Beat Takeshi who want him to make soundtracks for them. His piano music is used in TV commercials (iTunes link) quite often, too, and he's the composer of the official Toyota Corolla theme. He's released dozens of albums featuring his healing piano music compositions, which you can browse and buy with the iTunes Japan prepaid cards J-List offers. Browse all his music via this link.

Joe Hisaishi plays the piano while simultaneously conducting an orchestra (the guy is a stud)