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Film Music Great: Ikebe

Janos Gereben on May 20, 2014
The dream-like music for <em>Kurosawa's Dreams</em> was written by Shinichiro Ikebe
The dream-like music for Kurosawa's Dreams was written by Shinichiro Ikebe

Coincidentally while looking through the material about the musicians involved in the S.F. Silent Film Festival, I was listening to Shinichiro Ikebe's haunting soundtrack to Shohei Imamura's Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, and don't want to miss the chance to call attention to Ikebe.

(A formative figure and leader of Japanese cinema's New Wave, Imamura is as widely revered in Japan as Akira Kurosawa is known worldwide — not that Imamura's two Palme d'Or awards at Cannes are chopped chicken liver.)

Ikebe is similar to Imamura in being better known in his country and in Europe than in the U.S., although chances are you heard his works without knowing the name.

Ikebe not only wrote the great scores for Kagemusha, MacArthur's Children, Kurosawa's Dreams, The Eel, Kagemusha, Rhapsody in August, and many other films, but his orchestral works and operas have been performed in Austria and Italy.

Beyond his film music, check out his Third and Fifth Symphonies.