Akira Tanba (1932-), a composer and musicologist born in Yokohama and based in Paris. His grandfather was Keizo Tanba (1854-1927), a pharmacologist who served as a professor at Tokyo Imperial University. He grew up in a music-loving family, with his father enjoying Noh chanting as a hobby and his mother playing the violin while sitting on tatami mats, and became fascinated by composition. He graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1957.

He considered the United States and France as study abroad destinations, but his teacher Tomojiro Ikenouchi recommended France, and he went to France as a French government scholarship student. He entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where he received a second prize in Tony Aubin's composition class in 1962 and a first prize the following year. In 1964, he received a first place in Olivier Messiaen's analysis class and a second prize the following year. Messiaen advised Tanba that he must master either serial technique or musique concrète; Tanba chose the latter and, with a letter of introduction from Messiaen, visited Pierre Schaeffer and joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) of the French National Radio (now Radio France) (Note 1). The national broadcaster significantly contributed to Tanba's establishment as a composer by publishing his scores and holding a concert titled “A Day of Akira Tanba” in 1979.

Furthermore, advised by musicologist Jacques Chailley and Messiaen, he began researching Japanese music at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in France from 1967. The results were compiled into dissertations submitted to the University of Paris: “The Musical Structure of Noh” (1971) and “The Theory of Japanese Music from the 8th to the End of the 19th Century” (1986), earning him a Doctor of Musicology degree for the former and a Doctorat d'État for the latter. He served as a senior researcher (directeur de recherche) at CNRS and taught at the University of Paris and other institutions. He has published numerous writings on Japanese music, including commentaries for Radio France's ethnomusicological record series “Ocora.”

In his compositions, following Messiaen's emphasis on extracting principles by traversing musical heritage from all times and places, Tanba actively employed principles such as “Jo-Ha-Kyu” from Japanese music. He composed for various ensembles and has also dedicated himself to creating traditional Japanese music (hogaku) works, serving as music director for “Hogaku Seikai” since 2002. His magnum opus, the music drama Shiramine, composed over eight years from 2000 and requiring approximately two and a half hours for performance, premiered in Japan in 2014. His wife is Irène Metz, a linguist specializing in Oriental languages.

(Note 1) According to Répertoire acousmatique: 1948-1980 / INA-GRM, a catalog of works by the Groupe de Recherches Musicales published by the Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA) in 1980, Tanba created six works with the group between 1964 and 1966. It is presumed that other collaboratively created works also exist.