Toshio Hosokawa was born in Japan in 1955. He studied counterpoint and harmony in Tokyo, then moved to Berlin in 1976, where he studied composition with Isang Yun, piano with Rolf Kuhnert, and analysis with Witold Szalonek at the Hochshule der Künste. He participated in the Darmstadt Summer courses in 1980, and studied with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough at the Hochshule für Musik in Fribourg-en-Brisgau (1983-1986). During this time, Klaus Huber encouraged Hosokawa to return to Japan in order to explore his own musical traditions in-depth. This fostered a two-faceted approach to music that laid the groundwork for a body of work that drew in equal parts on the masterworks of the Western tradition – Hosokawa cites Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert among his favorite composers, as well as Nono, Lachenmann, and of course, Huber – and the Japanese classical tradition, particularly gagaku, the ancient court music of Japan.

Hosokawa has been a guest composer, a composer-in-residence, and a lecturer at Europe’s major contemporary music festivals, including the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Lucerne Festival, the Centre Acanthes de Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, the Venice Biennale, Musica Viva, and Helsinki’s Musica Nova. He works closely with the WDR Rundfunkchor Köln (the Cologne radio choir), and was a composer in residence with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester for the 2006-2007 season. In 1989, he founded a contemporary music festival in Akiyoshidai (southern Japan) which he directed until 1998.

His catalogue includes orchestral works, concertos, chamber music, music for traditional Japanese instruments, film scores, and operas. He prioritizes slowness in his writing, which is characterized by a loose, meditative feeling whose spiritual dimension is never far off. Often, he composes in vast cycles, (“Sen,” “Ferne Landschaft,” “Landscape,” “Voyage,” and “Ocean”). Themes of inner voyage and the ties between nature and the individual are another common theme in his Concerto for cello and orchestra (1997), Concerto for saxophone and orchestra (1998) Concerto for piano and orchestra (1999), and Concerto for clarinet (2000).

Other compositions include concertos: Chant for cello and orchestra, which premiered in Cologne in 2009 in a performance by Rohan de Saram WDR Symphony Orchestra; Voyage X for shakuhachi and ensemble, which premiered in a performance by MusikFabrik in June 2009; and Concerto for horn – Moment of Blossoming (2011). His works for voice include Sternlose Nacht – Requiem für Jahreszeiten (2010), The Raven, a monodrama that premiered in a performance by Ars Musica in 2012, as well as the opera Matsukaze, which premiered at La Monnaie in Brussels in 2011. His orchestral works include Woven Dreams (2010), Meditation – to the Victims of Tsunami 3.11 (2012), and many solo pieces, including Small Chant for cello, Mai – Uralte japanische Tanzmusik for piano, Lied for recorder (2012), and Étude I –VI, for piano (2013). His opera Stilles Meer premiered in 2016, conducted by Kent Nagano, at the Hamburg Staatoper.

Hosokawa was a composer in residence with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra from 1998 to 2007, and has served as musical director of the Takefu International Music Festival and has been a member of the Berlin Arts Academy since 2001. He was also appointed guest professor at the Tokyo College of Music in 2004 and was a guest researcher at the Berlin Institute for Advanced study from 2006 to 2009. He has taught at the Darmstadt Summer Courses since 1990. He served as the artistic director of the Suntory Hall International Program for Music Composition from 2012 to 2015.

Toshio Hosokawa has received numerous awards and honors, including first prize in the composition competition that marked the 100th anniversary of the Berliner Philharmonike for Preludio and the Irino Prize for Young Composers in Tokyo, both in 1982. He won the Arion-Musikpreis in Tokyo and the “Young Generation in Europe” Music Prize (Cologne, Paris, Venice) in 1985, and the Kyoto and Otaka Prizes in 1988. He received the Energia Music Award in Hiroshima in 1995, the Rheingau Musikpreis and the Duisburger Musikpreis in 1998, the Musica Viva Festival Prize in 2001, and the Otaka Prize for best orchestral work for Re-turning in Japan in 2001. He was awarded the British Composer Award in 2013 (International Prize Category) for his orchestral work Woven Dreams.