Yoko Shimomura

Yoko Shimomura

Yoko Shimomura (下村 陽子, Shimomura Yōko, born October 19, 1967) is a Japanese video game music composer and musician.

Biography

Early life

Yoko Shimomura was born in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. She developed an interest for music at a young age, and at the age of four, she started taking piano lessons. Inspired by classical music, she began composing her own music by playing the piano randomly. Shimomura attended Osaka College of Music, and graduated as a piano major in 1988. Upon graduation, Shimomura intended to become a piano instructor, but as she had been an avid gamer for many years, she decided to send some samples of her work to various video game companies. Capcom invited her in for an audition and interview, and she was offered a job there. Her family and instructors were dismayed with her change in focus, but Shimomura accepted the job anyway.

Career

While working for Capcom, she was a member of the company's in-house jazz band Alph Lyla, and composed the soundtrack of Street Fighter II.

In 1993, Shimomura transferred to another game company, Square (now Square Enix). Her first project at the company was the score for the console role-playing game (RPG) Live A Live in 1994. Afterwards, she was paired with more experienced composers for a time. For example, she teamed with Noriko Matsueda on the strategy/RPG Front Mission in 1995, and in 1996, she composed and arranged the music in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, arranging music from Koji Kondo's Mario series music, and three tracks from Final Fantasy IV by Nobuo Uematsu.

She went solo again in 1998 for the soundtrack to Parasite Eve. One of her most famous works was achieved in 1999 with Legend of Mana, a follow up to the Mana series.

In 2002, Yoko Shimomura left Square to work as a freelancer. One of her first projects as an independent was to compose the soundtrack for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for the Game Boy Advance.

Shimomura's most notable recent score is for Kingdom Hearts II from 2005, the sequel to the first joint Square/Disney venture that features Disney characters in an action role-playing game environment. She also composed the score to the game's predecessors, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts. Shimomura was initially apprehensive about the Kingdom Hearts project, skeptical if she could successfully pull it off.

In March 2008, Shimomura's best works compilation album Drammatica was released containing her compositions from Kingdom Hearts and other games in a full orchestrated score. It includes music from Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Live A Live, Kingdom Hearts, Front Mission, Legend of Mana, and Heroes of Mana. In an interview with Music4Games regarding the project, Shimomura commented that with the sheet music generated for the project, she'd be interested in pursuing a live performance of Drammatica for fans if the opportunity arose.

Musical style and influences

The score for Legend of Mana showed a high range of breadth and depth to her music, and the music can be regarded as classical.

Discography

Video game soundtracks

• Samurai Sword (1988)
• Adventures in the Magic Kingdom (1990)
• The King of Dragons (1991)
• Block Block (1991) (with Masaki Izutani)
• Street Fighter II (1992) (with Isao Abe)
• Breath of Fire (1993) (with Bun Bun), Minae Fujii, and Mari Yamaguchi)
• The Punisher (1993) (with Isao Abe)
• Super Street Fighter II (1993) (with Alph Lyla)
• Live A Live (1994)
• Front Mission (1995) (with Noriko Matsueda)
• Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (1996) (including arrangements of music by Nobuo Uematsu and Koji Kondo)
• Tobal No. 1 (1996) (with Masashi Hamauzu, Junya Nakano, Yasuhiro Kawakami, Kenji Ito, Noriko Matsueda, Ryuji Sasai, and Yasunori Mitsuda)
• Parasite Eve (1998)
• Legend of Mana (1999)
• Kingdom Hearts (2002)
• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (2003)
• Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (2004)
• Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (2005)
• Kingdom Hearts II (2005)
• Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner (2006) (with Shinji Hosoe, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Yasunori Mitsuda, Kenji Ito, Masaharu Iwata, Tsukasa Masuko, Yasuyuki Suzuki, Ayako Saso, and Takahiro Ogata)
• Heroes of Mana (2007)
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008) (with several other video game composers)
• Little King's Story (2008)
• Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (2009)
• Kingdom Hearts coded (TBA)
• Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep (2009)
• The 3rd Birthday (2009)
• Final Fantasy Versus XIII (TBA)

Other works

• Parasite Eve Remixes (1998)
• Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II Premium Arrange (2004) (with Motoi Sakuraba, Takayuki Aihara, Motoaki Furukawa, Shinji Hosoe, Nobuyoshi Sano, Manabu Namiki, Yuri Hiranuma, Masaharu Iwata, Shin Asai, Noriyuki Iwadare, and Kenji Ito)
• Dark Chronicle Premium Arrange (2004) (with Motoi Sakuraba, The Black Mages, Noriyuki Iwadare, Yasunori Mitsuda, Shinji Hosoe, and Kenji Ito)
• Rogue Galaxy Premium Arrange (2006) (with Motoi Sakuraba, Noriyuki Iwadare, Kenji Ito, Yasunori Mitsuda, Shinji Hosoe, Takayuki Aihara, Norihiko Hibino, Nobuyoshi Sano, and Yoshitaka Hirota)
• Murmur (2007) (original album with lyrics and vocals by Chata)
• Drammatica (2008)

External links

• Yoko Shimomura's official Japanese website
• Composer profile at OverClocked ReMix
• RocketBaby's Interview
• Yoko Shimomura at IMDb
• Yoko Shimomura discography at MusicBrainz