TANAKA, Kumiko

Kumiko Tanaka (born 1959) is a Japanese composer and educator born in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture. She studied music at Kyoto University of Education and composition at Kyoto City University of Arts, with further studies in France under Michel Merlet and Édith Lejet. Her catalogue includes orchestral and wind ensemble music, opera, chamber and solo instrumental works, and music for film and theatrical productions. Major works include the wind suite Tabibito (Traveler, 1995), Wind Crossing the Sea (2000), the alto saxophone concerto Sedona, and the opera Ōgi no Mato (2014). Her music has received particular recognition in France, where several works have been selected as competition repertoire and performed by leading wind ensembles; Sedona won First Prize in the alto saxophone concerto category of the inaugural Lambersart International Wind Music Composition Competition in 2006. Tanaka has also received commissions from the cities of Kyoto, Kobe, Sendai, and Takamatsu. She has taught composition, harmony, counterpoint, fugue, and orchestration at several Japanese universities and became Professor at Osaka University of Arts in 2017.