Yugo Kanno

Prolific Japanese composer Yugo Kanno is one of the nation's leading figures in scoring animated films for television and cinema. Kanno's best known work has an energetic attack that combines elements of pop, rock, and electronic music, a good match for the action-packed visuals heard on his music for the Netflix series Pluto and the screen adaptation of the popular manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Kanno also writes music for orchestras and frequently conducts concerts of his works.

Yugo Kanno was born in Japan's Saitama Prefecture on June 5, 1977. His father had an impressive audio system, and Kanno grew up listening to his collection of jazz and classical recordings. At the age of four, he took up the piano, and his two passions in life became music and soccer. He played in the wind ensemble in junior high, and when he moved on to high school, he began learning composition. After completing high school, he was accepted at the Tokyo College of Music, where he made composition his focus. Kanno was already writing scores for musicians before he graduated, and after receiving his degree, he worked in advertising, writing familiar jingles for several major Japanese firms. In 2004, he landed his first major scoring assignment, penning the music for a Fuji TV drama titled Last Christmas. He was soon juggling a busy schedule, scoring nearly 60 TV projects between 2005 and 2019, among them 2008's Innocent Love, 2009's Samurai High School, and 2019's Sherlock: Untold Stories. Kanno was also in high demand scoring anime releases, writing theme songs and background music for over 25 animated projects including the popular series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The Animation and the critically acclaimed Netflix adaptation of the manga series Pluto. Kanno would also add a number of theatrical feature films to his résumé, such as 2008's Shaolin Girl, 2012's The Wings of the Kirin, and 2022's Silent Parade (aka Chinmoku no Parade). Though he'd enjoyed great success writing music for the screen, Kanno was also a passionate advocate for the experience of hearing orchestral music performed live, and in 2013 he debuted Yugo Kanno Meets Art & Music: Spin-Off Work from the Movie The Intermission. Kanno directed the first performance of his Symphony No.1 "The Border" in 2016, and Symphony No.2 "Alles ist Architektur" enjoyed its first public performance in 2019. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi