Makoto Shinohara

Makoto Shinohara (篠原 眞) was a Japanese composer.

Born in Osaka, Japan, Shinohara studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts from 1952 to 1954, studying composition with Tomojirō Ikenouchi, piano with Kazuko Yasukawa, and conducting with Akeo Watanabe and Kurt Wöss.

From 1954 to 1960, he studied in Paris with Tony Aubin, Olivier Messiaen, Simone Plé-Caussade, Pierre Revel and Louis Fourestier.

From 1962 to 1964 he studied at the Hochschule für Musik München and at the Siemens-Studio für elektronische Musik; following this he studied with Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Gottfried Michael Koenig at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne and then with Karlheinz Stockhausen from 1964 to 1965.

He held a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service in 1966 and 1967 and won a scholarship from the Italian government in 1969.

From the 1970s onwards, he was best known for combining Western and traditional Japanese music, as well as versatile experimentation with Western acoustic and electronic music.

Shinohara died of stomach cancer on 3 March 2024, at the age of 92.

Sources

In 1971, he was awarded the Rockefeller Prize from the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center and in 1978 won a scholarship from the Dutch government.

Shinohara worked with electronic music at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht, at the electronic studio at the Technische Universität Berlin, at the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York (1971–72) and at Studio NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai) in Tokyo.

In 1978 Shinohara was a visiting professor of composition at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.