Yoshihisa Taira was born in Tokyo on June 3 in 1937. He studied composition under Tomojirō Ikenouchi and Yoshio Hasegawa at the Tokyo University of the Arts. After graduating the university in 1966, he went to France as a student sent abroad by the Japanese government. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire under the tutelage of A. Jolivet, H. Dutilleux and O. Messiaen. Taira graduated from the conservatoire in 1971 and was awarded the Lili Boulanger Prize at the same year. Subsequently, his opportunities to participate in national music festivals such as the Royan Festival increased. Taira won the SACEM Grand Prix de Composition in 1974 and the UNESCO International Composers Tribune Award in 1982. From 1983, Taira began teaching at the Ecole Normale de Musique. On March 13 in 2005, he passed away in Paris.

It was after a concert performance by the NHK Symphony Orchestra of Taira’s “Chromophony” in 1974 that the name of Yoshihisa Taira began to be known in Japan. He was invited to Akiyoshidai National 20th century Festival in 1992 and received a commission from Mito Museum, “Saiun (Color rimmed Clouds)” for chamber orchestra, which had its first public performance conducted by Seiji Ozawa in 2002.

The essence of Taira’s works exhibits a taste for echoes and the delicacy of tone color. Devoting himself wholeheartedly to music and approaching music, so to speak, as a form of prayer, Taira continued to search for a music in which always the ‘breath of sound’ can be heard and in which the audiences, too, are able to breathe themselves.