Yoshihisa Taira

Yoshihisa Taira
(b Tokyo, 3 March 1937). Japanese composer, active in France. After studying composition with Ikenouchi at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, graduating in 1965, he studied with Jolivet, Dutilleux and Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire; remaining in Paris, he gained a teaching post at the Ecole Normale de Musique.

His work has been performed at the Domaine Musical and the Itinéraire, at festivals in Avignon, Darmstadt, Berlin, Tanglewood and Tokyo, and by the Ensemble InterContemporain. Among his awards are the Lily Boulanger Prize (1971), the SACEM Grand Prix de Composition (1974), the UNESCO International Composers Tribune award (1982), and the Prix Florent Schmitt from the Paris Academy of Fine Arts (1985); he was made an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Throughout his music, Taïra maintains a thoughtful balance between traditional Japanese and Western contemporary music and aesthetics. His treatment of time and space, sonority, poetic lyricism, silence and many idiomatic techniques such as precise articulation, abrupt dynamic contrasts and glissandi are derived from traditional Japanese music and art, and are compatible with a French modernist aesthetic.