His father a cellist and his mother a pianist, Toshi Ichiyanagi was exposed to avant-garde music from a young age. By twenty, he was working as a pianist at an American military base in Tokyo, where he performed Broadway musical comedies, waltzes, and jazz. He also introduced his neighbor Tōru Takemitsu to the works of Olivier Messiaen.

After receiving several awards in Japan, Ichiyanagi left to study at the University of Minnesota in 1952, while taking lessons at the Tanglewood Music Center with Aaron Copland. From 1954 to 1957, he joined the composition program at the Juilliard School. At the time, his ambition was to become a dodecaphonist composer, but the Juilliard School did not satisfy his expectations in this regard. He thus redirected his studies in search of modernist teaching. He found several composers who better fit his aspirations, such as Luigi Dallapiccola, Edgard Varèse, Goffredo Petrassi, Lukas Foss, and Stefan Wolpe.

At the same time, he found his place in the world of the underground New York art scene, where he met Yoko Ono, with whom he developed a strong artistic synergy. The pair married in 1956 before separating in 1962. During this period, Ichiyanagi gravitated around events of the Fluxus movement. He played pieces by La Monte Young at the AG Gallery in New York, where he met David Tudor, who introduced him to John Cage.

In 1958, he joined the New School for Social Research, where he became one of Cage’s protégés. Cage helped him become the improvisational pianist for Merce Cunningham’s dance company. Ichiyanagi was consequently tasked with organizing Cage’s 1960 tour of Japan, a cornerstone event in the spread of contemporary music in the archipelago. In 1966, Ichiyanagi and Takemitsu founded the Orchestral Space festival, with the aim of publicizing experimental music in Japan.

His mentor introduced him to many artists, including Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, and the futurist Richard Buckminster Fuller. Conscious of the visual aspect of his work, Ichiyanagi developed his own system of notation. A derivative of the Western system, his was a graphic notation that earned him several exhibitions in galleries. Some of his scores are the property of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, such as IBM for Merce Cunningham, made from the first IBM computer cards. In 1962, Ichiyanagi organized the International Graphic Scores Exhibition at the Minami Gallery in Tokyo with Kuniharu Akiyama.

Another prominent feature of Ichiyanagi’s works lies in their interpretation by the performer. The notation leaves them ample freedom to make decisions concerning structure, pitch, density, color, and sonic activity. Ichiyanagi’s experiments began in 1959 with Music for Piano No. 2, followed by Music for Electronic Metronome (1960), and lasted his whole career until the Piano Concerto No. 6 (2016).

In 1989, Ichiyanagi formed the Tokyo International Music Ensemble – the New Tradition, led by his study of dialogues between Western and Eastern musical traditions. This ensemble was made up of a mix of Japanese and Western instruments and used Shōmyō, a Buddhist liturgical chant. For this project, Ichiyanagi wrote many pieces, such as Reigaku Symphony No. 2 (1989), The Way I and II (1990), Uncho Kuyo Bosatsu (1994), and Spiritual Sight (1996).

Ichiyanagi was artistic director of the Kanagawa Arts Foundation from 1996 to 2021. In the last years of his life, he developed an intense connection with Finland, where he founded the Japan–Finland Contemporary Music Society. He represented this bond in music in 2011 with his Fifth Piano Concerto, subtitled “Finland.”

Prizes and Awards

• Officer of the Order of the Rising Sun, 2005
• 33rd Suntory Music Award, 2002
• Japanese Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon, 1999
• Grand Prix of the Nakajima Prize for activities as a composer, 1984
• Otaka Prize for Circulating Scenery, 1984
• Otaka Prize for Piano Concerto No. 1, “Reminiscence of Spaces,” 1981
• Alexander Gretchaninov Prize, 1957
• Serge Koussevitzky Prize, 1956
• Elizabeth A. Coolidge Prize for Sonata, 1955
• First place in the Mainichi Music Competition, composition, 1951 and 1949