Known for his film scores, Joe Hisaishi is as equally adept in the concert hall

The rise of Japan’s Studio Ghibli, whose popular animated films include “Princess Mononoke,” “Spirited Away” and “The Boy and the Heron,” has been accompanied by a growing appreciation for the composer responsible for those and many other scores over the past 40 years: Joe Hisaishi.

Hisaishi’s enchanting, melodic accompaniments for these colorful, hand-drawn, folk-inspired tales have catapulted him into the front ranks of the world’s film composers and won him eight Japanese Academy Awards, as well as honors from the Annie Awards and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

His initial score for Studio Ghibli filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” (1984) launched a now legendary collaboration that has included “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988), “Princess Mononoke” (1997), “Spirited Away” (2001), “Howl’s Moving Castle” (2004), “Ponyo” (2008), “The Wind Rises” (2013) and “The Boy and the Heron” (2023). Some observers compare their long professional relationship as the Japanese equivalent of the familiar partnership of John Williams and Steven Spielberg. Hisaishi has also scored such live-action films as “Sonatine” (1993), “Dolls” (2002), “Departures” (2008) and “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” (2025).

Hisaishi’s film fame has tended to obscure his work for the concert hall, perhaps unfairly, as he has composed numerous works for orchestra, chorus and chamber ensembles during the past three decades. Three symphonies; concertos for harp, viola, contrabass and horns; works for choir, chamber orchestra and more, are among his non-film compositions. (Hisaishi will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in his Symphony No. 2 and selections from his film scores in concerts April 23-26.)

He was born in 1950 as Mamoru Fujisawa in Nagano, Japan, studied both violin and piano as a youth, and was equally fascinated by jazz and contemporary classical music. He studied composition at the Kunitachi College of Music and has cited the Yellow Magic Orchestra (which included future film composer Ryuichi Sakamoto) as an early influence.

Beginning in the 1980s, he released albums that featured the eclectic sounds of gamelan orchestra, rock beats and electronics. His stage name “Joe Hisaishi” is the Japanese equivalent of “Quincy Jones,” which is both an in-joke and a hint about his personal taste in music. His admiration for Gustav Mahler also led him to build a replica of Mahler’s Austrian composition hut near his summer house in Japan.

From the very start, the composer found inspiration in the minimalist composers of his time: Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass. That inspiration is evident throughout his Symphony No. 2, composed during the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and premiered in April 2021 by the New Japan Philharmonic World Dream Orchestra in Kyoto.

The 38-minute work combines Eastern and Western classical traditions. As Hisaishi wrote at the time: “Precisely because of the times we are living through, I wanted to write something that was not heavy in nature. In other words, I aimed to create a composition that purely explores the kinetic energy of sound.” The first movement, ”What the World Is Now?” is built upon a phrase introduced by the cello, with rhythmic variations helping to shape the expressive character of the music.

The second movement, “Variation 14,” consists of a theme, 14 variations and a coda. As the composer explained: ”I aimed to create a piece that is clear and simple, albeit technically challenging to perform. I believe that, above all else, the most important thing right now is simply to enjoy the music."

He characterized the third movement, “Nursery Rhyme,” as an “experimental work,” expanding a traditional Japanese song for children into symphonic form. Midway through the movement, an uptempo section features shifting meters while continuing to play variations on the original tune. “My compositional intent,” he wrote, ”was guided by the conviction that that being more distinctly Japanese is, in fact, what makes a work truly global.”

“Castle in the Sky” (1986), marked the second of Hisaishi’s 11 feature films with director Hayao Miyazaki and the first to be animated by Studio Ghibli. In the story, a pair of orphans — a girl named Sheeta who possesses a powerful crystal, and a boy named Pazu from a mining town — try to learn the truth about the mythical, rarely seen kingdom of Laputa, seemingly lost in the clouds. Together, they manage to elude both sky pirates and nefarious government agents in an incredible adventure. (For the 2003 English-language release, Anna Paquin, James Van Der Beek, Cloris Leachman, Mandy Patinkin and Mark Hamill supplied the voices.)

Hisaishi composed one of his most lyrical themes for this pro-environmental fable whose retro-futuristic look has made the film a favorite in the steampunk genre. Perhaps inspired by Pazu’s trumpet playing in the story, the composer adapted his score into a seven-minute piece for trumpet soloist and orchestra; it was debuted in 2004 by the World Dream Orchestra. (With the CSO, Principal Trumpet Esteban Batallán will be the soloist.)

“Spirited Away” won the Oscar for Animated Feature Film at the 75th Academy Awards; it was the first hand-drawn, non-English-language animated film to win this category. Miyazaki later won an honorary Oscar as “a master storyteller whose animated artistry has inspired filmmakers and audiences around the world” and won another Oscar for “The Boy and the Heron” (2023).

Released in Japan in 2001, “Spirited Away” quickly became the highest-grossing film in Japanese cinema history. Miyazaki’s elaborate, sometimes bizarre fantasy centers on a girl named Chihiro, whose parents stumble across an abandoned theme park that turns out to be haunted. The adults are turned into pigs, and Chihiro befriends a boy named Haku who helps her find work in a bathhouse as a first step toward escape and breaking the spell that transformed her mom and dad. (The voice cast for the English-language version includes Daveigh Chase, Jason Marsden, Suzanne Pleshette and David Ogden Stiers.)

Its music ranks among Hisaishi’s most popular scores, which prompted him to assemble an orchestral suite from the film in 2018. Although it plays as a single 25-minute movement, it’s drawn from 10 specific scenes in the movie. "One Summer Day,” Chihiro’s piano theme, opens the suite; "Nighttime Coming” introduces her to the strange, frightening, often malevolent figures that dominate the park; "Procession of the Spirits” is the lighthearted march that accompanies the spirits as they enter the complex.

“Bathhouse Morning” is the delicate music heard as Chihiro awakens and starts her workday; “The Bottomless Pit” is from a terrifying scene in which Chihiro and Haku plummet into the endless darkness from the top of a tall building. A harp figure segues into a dramatic moment as Chihiro discovers Haku’s original form and tries to help him in “The Dragon Boy”; “Kaonashi (No Face)” is the music of a mysterious, seemingly monstrous, spirit that is destroying the bathhouse.

Moody piano and strings play during “The Sixth Station,” as Chihiro and Kaonashi take the train to right a destructive, ancient wrong; “Reprise” is the warm musical accompaniment for Chihiro and Haku in dragon form as they fly home, now in possession of the answers they’ve been seeking, and "The Return” concludes on a celebratory note as Chihiro is reunited with her parents, now back in human form, and wonders if everything she’s just experienced really happened.

As Hisaishi once told an interviewer: “In my life, I just want to make music that can make people happy and escape.”