The NYT has a great article about pianist and composer Joe Hisaishi. I consider myself a fan and there’s a lot in here that I didn’t know. It’s also really interesting in light of the recent conversations we’ve had here on PT about how to define post classical and film music.
The article has audio samples throughout, so if you don’t have a NYT account, it would probably be worth it to create a free account so you can listen to the samples.
Here’s the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/arts/music/joe-hisaishi-composer-studio-ghibli.html
Free version of the article (without audio access) https://archive.is/C95TX
The following paragraph caught my eye, since one of the ways I distinguish, for example, minimalism from other contemporary piano is to point out that Einaudi, Ffrench, and yes, Hisaishi, are all very melody-forward….
Hisaishi’s film music is predominantly charming and intractably memorable, in part because he approaches composition horizontally rather than vertically: through a line of melody more than stacked harmonies. This leads to soundtracks that behave almost like counterpoint, flowing alongside the film instead of strictly underscoring it with illustrative effects and emotional guideposts.
It’s also interesting to me that these guys (Einaudi, Ffrench, Hisaishi, Sakamoto) all write orchestral compositions as well as solo piano music…