(born May 3, 1959) is a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

and conductor living in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

.André de Quadros ''The Cambridge Companion to Choral Music'' 2012 1107493390 p.156 "There has been a marked increase in choral compositions since the founding of the JCA ... Notable choral composers are Chihara Hideki, Hosakawa Toshio, Suzuki Teruaki, Kanno Shigeru, and Matsushita Ko; ..."

Biography

Shigeru Kan-no was born in

Fukushima may refer to: Japan * Fukushima Prefecture, Japanese prefecture ** Fukushima, Fukushima, capital city of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan ***Fukushima University, national university in Japan *** Fukushima Station (Fukushima) in Fukushima, Fukushim ...

, Japan. He now lives as a free-lance composer and conductor in

Westerwald The Westerwald (; literally 'Western forest') is a low mountain range on the right bank of the river Rhine in the German federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. It is a part of the Rhenish Massif ( or Rhenish ...

, Germany. His repertoire includes over 100 operas and 700 concert pieces. He is also a talented performer, able to play

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

organ Organ may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a part of an organism Musical instruments * Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone ** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument ** Hammond ...

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

, cello, percussion and lyre. As a

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

in the contemporary repertoire, he has played the music of

Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mont ...

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...

Helmut Lachenmann Helmut Friedrich Lachenmann (born 27 November 1935) is a German composer of contemporary classical music. His work has been associated with "instrumental musique concrète". Life and works Lachenmann was born in Stuttgart and after the end of ...

Giacinto Scelsi Giacinto Francesco Maria Scelsi (; 8 January 1905 – 9 August 1988, sometimes cited as 8 August 1988) was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French. He is best known for having composed music based around only one pitch, ...

Arvo Pärt Arvo Pärt (; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of contemporary classical music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. Pärt's music is in pa ...

Luciano Berio Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...

, Sati, Karkoschka, Blume, etc. He has won dozens of competitions in composition and conducting, and sixteen bursaries. His conducting experience includes various orchestras and chamber groups, choirs, ensembles for new music, ''Posaunenchöre'' (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

brass band; literally "

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...

choir A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which ...

"), operas and singing concerts, etc. A frequent advisor and teacher to other musicians, he has also served as a jurist for international competitions in composition and singing. The music of Shigeru Kan-no is restrained, and at the same time, strong and colourful. He composes in every form of classical music and uses many musical techniques: tonal, atonal, chance, noise, pentatonic, hexatonic, serial, micro tone, free-form, electronic, minimal, no repetition, counterpoint,

harmony In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However ...

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

, concrete, voluntary, etc. He favours long-form works for large

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

, and his style shows the influence of

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

Gustav Mahler Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...

Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...

Havergal Brian Havergal Brian (born William Brian; 29 January 187628 November 1972) was an English composer. He is best known for having composed 32 symphonies (an unusually high total for a 20th-century composer), most of them late in his life. His best-know ...

Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...

LaMonte Young La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best kno ...

, etc. He studied singing, piano and musical theory in

with Takeo Endo, Kazutsugu Saito, Chieko Saito and Kunio Suda. In

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, he studied theory with Hideo Arashino, composition with Takehito Shimazu and

Akira Nishimura is a Japanese composer from Osaka. Biography Nishimura studied composition and musical theory on a graduate course at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He also studied Asian traditional music, religion, aesthetics, cosmology and ...

, piano with Yuko Ozaki and Masako Hoshide, and conducting with Kikuo Matsumoto and Kazuhiko Sakamoto. In

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, he studied with

Karl Österreicher Karl Österreicher (3 January 1923 – 11 March 1995) was an Austrian conductor and music teacher. Life Born in Rohrbach an der Gölsen, Lower Austria, Austrian studied clarinet as well as conducting with Hans Swarowsky, later also with Alfr ...

and

Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first America ...

. In

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

, he studied

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

with

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...

with

Erhard Karkoschka Erhard Karkoschka (March 6, 1923 – June 26, 2009), was a German composer, scholar and conductor. Karkoschka was born in the German linguistic enclave of Moravská Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, and subsequent to World War II became a violinist for th ...

and

orchestration Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orc ...

with

Milko Kelemen Milko Kelemen (30 March 1924 – 8 March 2018) was a Croatian composer. Life Milko Kelemen was born in Slatina, Croatia (then Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes). He studied under Stjepan Šulek in Zagreb, under Olivier Messiaen in Paris ...

. He studied

film music A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to e ...

with

Cong Su :''This is a Chinese name; the family name is Su.'' Cong Su (; born 1957 in Tianjin, China) is a Chinese composer. He studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, then in Germany. He has lectured on music theory, music analysis, film ...

in Ludwigsburg, and in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

he took composition with

Hans Zender Johannes Wolfgang Zender (22 November 1936 – 22 October 2019) was a German conductor and composer. He was the chief conductor of several opera houses, and his compositions, many of them vocal music, have been performed at international festival ...

and conducting with Hans-Dieter Loesch. His technique and thinking about contemporary composition has influenced many young German composers: Carsten Hennig, Urlich Reuter,

Charlotte Seither Charlotte Seither (born 1965) is a German classical composer, pianist and music educator. She has composed a wide range of orchestral music, orchestral, chamber music, chamber and choral music, winning many awards including the 2014 German Music A ...

, etc. His compositional output is over 351 pieces.

References

External links

Biography at concertartist.com
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kan-no, Shigeru 1959 births 20th-century classical composers 20th-century conductors (music) 20th-century Japanese composers 20th-century Japanese male musicians 21st-century classical composers 21st-century conductors (music) 21st-century Japanese composers 21st-century Japanese male musicians Japanese classical composers Japanese conductors (music) Japanese male classical composers Japanese male conductors (music) Living people Musicians from Fukushima Prefecture