Kitaro Anthology Songbook Warner Bros

Composer Kitaro, with a Golden Globe Award, five Grammy nomination, and over two dozen albums to his credit, is revered most for his ability to embody the human spirit in his music. Born into a Japanese Shinto farming family in 1953 and raised in a culture that has become increasingly westernized, he continues to hold traditional values most important.

Although he's been categorized in the New Age genre, Kitaro prefers to call his music simply "spiritual", distinguished by its warmth and emotion as opposed to the New Age emphasis on digital technique over humanness. "Feeling," he says, "is the most important element in my music."

This is evident on his album, Kitaro - An Enchanted Evening, a live album of his most recent U.S. concert tour. Released in July 1996, it features music from his last studio album, Mandala, his Golden Globe Award-winning original score for Oliver Stone's film, Heaven and Earth, and other earlier work. Presented in I-Trax "enhanced CD" format, it has computer capabilities to enclude video footage, biographical material, a discography and information on ordering Kitaro merchandise.

Today, Kitaro's music is increasingly progressive, full of innovative touches. Written, arranged, and produced by the musician himself, it is a haunting study in contrasts that takes its cue from nature and spirit. Resonant with exotic Japanese instruments as well as the more familiar guitar, flute, and drums, it shimmers one minute and rumbles the next, by turns soothing and stirring, atonal and rhythmic, orchestrally full and dramatic, yet surprisingly intimate, with the ability to transport the listener on a far-reaching musical journey that draws refrains of East and West together.

"I'm always looking for new sounds," says Kitaro, who began playing electric guitar in high school and formed the band Albatross, which featured his poetry set to original music. In the 1970s, he switched to keyboards and formed the Far East Family Band, which released two progressive rock albums and served as a prelude to Kitaro's impressionistic compositions to come.

The musician's entire creative direction changed during a 1972 visit to Europe, where he met Klaus Schulze, the innovative German synthesizer wizard with New Age pioneers Tangerine Dream. It was then that Kitaro discovered the synthesizer's versatility and power to create the visual images critics came to call "mind music". Says Kitaro of his sound pictures, "With a synthesizer I could create an ocean, a winter coastline, a summer beach --- a whole scene."

Soon recognized throughout Asia and other parts of the world, Kitaro launched his career in America ten years ago, garnering greater international stature in 1986 by signing a worldwide distribution agreement with Geffen Records. He became even more accessible by collaborating with such high-profile musicians as Yes' Jon Anderson and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead. In 1978 he sold ten million albums worldwide--two million in the U.S.--and a year later released a double album of greatest hits, also earning a Grammy nomination for "The Field", the single from his "Light of the Spirit" album.

Although Kitaro has lived in the U.S. for the past five years on a 180-acre spread outside Boulder, Colorado, he realizes the importance of not straying too far musically from his Japanese origins. Each year the musician returns to the foot of Mount Fuji to perform the ritual drum ceremony he instituted in 1983 in which, from sunrise to sunset, he beats towering Taiko drums so passionately that his hands often bleed.

Inspired by the majestic mountain views outside his 2500-square-foot home studio, on which he's putting the finishing touches ("It's large enough to hold a 70-piece orchestra--big enough for me!" he chuckles). Kitaro currently has a number of new projects on the drawing board. He's working on a Chinese film soundtrack, making a CD-ROM on native Japanese dance, and producing his own series of recordings entitled Kitaro's World of Music, which will feature Kitaro-dicovered artists from around the world to contemporary Western listeners.

Kitaro is perhaps most enthusiastic about bringing authentic native music into the mainstream. He's produced albums by fellow band members Nawang Khechog, a Tibetan monk flute player, and Yu-Xiao Guang, who plays a Chinese fiddle called the huquin -- both released on Domo Records.

"But my ultimate goal," concludes Kitaro, "is to keep expressing my feelings in music and for people to enjoy it."

Project Manager:
Sy Feldmann

Art Layout:
Debbie Johns Lipton

Photography by:
Hideo Oida
Richard E. Aaron
John Epperson
and
Peter Dokus

Kitaro Management:
Domo Music Group, Inc.

Printed in USA