About
Masahiro Hiramoto is a composer based in Tokyo, working in contemporary classical and post-classical forms — for installation, dance, film, theatre and photography.
He has written for Random International, Lil Buck and Jon Boogz, Nederlands Dans Theater and Göteborg Ballet, and for the photographers Adeolu Osibodu and Kishin Shinoyama. His work has been performed and exhibited in New York, London, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Riyadh and Tokyo.
He works with a standing ensemble of players in Tokyo and delivers finished recordings — written, performed, recorded and mixed, with rights cleared in one place.
Current work
Two albums released in 2025 and 2026 mark the current direction of the work — strings, piano, organ, synthesis and noise, written in long minimal forms. A third is due in early 2027.
- HUMAN, November 2025
- BEYOND, June 2026
- PROTAGONIST, January 2027
Pieces from HUMAN have been used in five short films by Adeolu Osibodu, Rufai Ismaila and Armin Keplinger, and three further films will use work from BEYOND.
How the work is made
The players are a fixed group, developed over several years toward a European and American performance idiom — an unusual approach in Tokyo, and one that means a score written here arrives sounding as intended elsewhere.
Background
Recent work has been made with Random International, whose installation Life In Our Minds: Motherflock has been exhibited in New York, Amsterdam and London since 2022; with the dancers Lil Buck and Jon Boogz in the United States; and with the photographer Adeolu Osibodu, on three short films. A commission with Zaha Hadid Architects is due in 2027.
Hiramoto has worked as a composer for over twenty years, much of it outside Japan. Since 2004 his music has been performed in Europe and Asia — for Nederlands Dans Theater, Göteborg Ballet in Sweden, Wiesbaden Ballet in Germany, Provisional Danza in Madrid, and the National Ballet of Japan.
He has written scores for feature films selected at the Berlin, Moscow, Shanghai and Tokyo international film festivals, including The Ravine of Goodbye, which took the Special Jury Prize at Moscow in 2013. For the stage, he has written for productions including Julius Caesar, directed by Yukio Ninagawa and staged in Japan and the UK. In 2016 he wrote the music, libretto and direction for OPERA -NEO- at Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre.
From 2006 to 2024 he collaborated with the photographer Kishin Shinoyama (1940–2024), across exhibitions, film and audiovisual concerts — eighteen years of work that ended with Île Noire, one of Shinoyama’s last major projects.
He studied at Tokyo University of the Arts, where he took a BA and an MA in music, and has since lectured there and at Waseda University, Kyoto University of the Arts and Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre.
Collaborators
- Random International
- Lil Buck
- Jon Boogz
- Movement Art Is
- Zaha Hadid Architects
- Sadler’s Wells
- Pett|Clausen-Knight
- Nederlands Dans Theater
- Göteborg Ballet
- Wiesbaden Ballet
- Provisional Danza
- The National Ballet of Japan
- Adeolu Osibodu
- Rufai Ismaila
- Armin Keplinger
- Shiseido
- Kishin Shinoyama
Commissions are taken directly. See Commission for scope, rights and timing.