Paul Chihara

Paul Seiko Chihara, born July 9, 1938, in Seattle, Washington, is an American composer and Broadway book writer. Of Japanese American heritage, he spent three years of his childhood with his family at the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho, where they were held under Executive Order 9066.

Chihara earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in English literature from the University of Washington and Cornell University, respectively, before completing a Doctor of Musical Arts at Cornell in 1965 under the guidance of Robert Palmer. He further pursued composition studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Ernst Pepping in West Berlin, and Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood.

His academic career included a position on the music faculty at UCLA, where he led the Visual Media Program, and as of 2015 he has served as Artist Faculty in Film Music at New York University. Earlier in his career, he became the first composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under conductor Neville Marriner, and he held a composer-in-residence position with the San Francisco Ballet for ten years.

Chihara's concert output spans symphonies, concertos, chamber music, choral compositions, and ballets, and has been performed nationally and internationally. His ballet scores include Tempest and Shinju. Commissions have come from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Roger Wagner Chorale, the Naumberg Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Cleveland Orchestra. His music frequently reflects the influence of Asian music and culture and incorporates elements drawn from jazz standards, folk songs, and the classical repertoire.

His work in film began with Roger Corman's Death Race 2000 in 1975, a project that coincided with his decision to leave academia and work as a full-time composer. That transition also marked a shift in his compositional style, moving away from twelve-tone and freely chromatic approaches toward a more tonal language. Over the course of his film career he composed nearly 100 scores, collaborating with directors including Sidney Lumet, Louis Malle, Michael Ritchie, and Arthur Penn. His film credits include Sweet Revenge (1976), I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977), The Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978), A Fire in the Sky (1978), Prince of the City (1981), The Legend of Walks Far Woman (1982), The Survivors (1983), Crackers (1984), Impulse (1984), The Morning After (1986), Forever, Lulu (1987), The Killing Time (1987), Crossing Delancey (1988), and Penn & Teller Get Killed (1989). His television work includes The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, Dr. Strange, Brave New World, Noble House, Frederick Forsyth Presents, and the pilot episode and theme music for Manimal.

On Broadway, Chihara composed the score for Shogun, The Musical, based on James Clavell's novel, which ran from November 1990 to January 1991. Among his notable students are composers James Horner, Sean Friar, Joseph Trapanese, and Cynthia Tse Kimberlin.