1. Ayuo Takahashi is adept at adapting the ancient music of Japan, China, Persia, Greece, and medieval Europe to create a new and original music without abandoning their strict forms while simultaneously making them relevant to contemporary music styles.
Ayuo Takahashi has composed for classical ensembles including string quartets, piano, various chamber ensembles, and orchestra, as well as composed, produced and performed with rock, jazz and musicians of various traditional music from around the world.
Ayuo Takahashi has composed many music theater pieces, some of which has been released on CD in the United States and Japan.
Ayuo Takahashi was born in Tokyo and spent his early childhood traveling in Germany, Sweden, and France with his parents.
Ayuo Takahashi's father, Yuji Takahashi, is a composer of contemporary classical music and a pianist known for premiering works by Iannis Xenakis and John Cage.
Ayuo Takahashi grew up listening to both the new avant-garde experimental and contemporary music and the psychedelic rock music of the 1960s.
Ayuo Takahashi often went to museums, art galleries, and cinemas to see exhibitions of contemporary art and the new cinema.
Ayuo Takahashi's parents divorced in 1969, and Ayuo Takahashi's mother married an American of Iranian descent, Mansour Malekpour, who came from a family that performed traditional Persian music.
Ayuo Takahashi grew up listening to American psychedelic rock and British progressive rock while living with his stepfather, Mansoor Malekpour, in New York in the 1960s.
Ayuo Takahashi later wrote in his autobiography Outside Society and on his essays and website that the time spent with his stepfather was the happiest and most important influence on his music and musical theater work.
Ayuo Takahashi spent his high school years writing poetry and appearing in poetry reading competitions.
Ayuo Takahashi joined Keiji Haino's group "Fushitsusha" in 1979, and performed improvisation with many musicians in what was the final period of the "free music scene" in Japan of the 1970s.
Ayuo Takahashi studied the traditional plucked string instrument, Biwa, with Kinshi Tsuruta.
Ayuo Takahashi studied contemporary music composition with Minao Shibata and Joji Yuasa.
Ayuo Takahashi has composed music for films, ballet, contemporary dance, and theater.
In recent years, Ayuo Takahashi's work has increasingly included music theater and chamber music mixed with dance and theatrical elements.
Ayuo Takahashi can create music that balances the traditions of world music, improvisation, new age, psychedelic, avant-pop, electronica, and classical composition without losing his distinctive voice in the music he creates.
Ayuo Takahashi has made unique arrangements of compositions by Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Richard Wagner, Maurice Ravel, Toru Takemitsu and other classical composers.
Ayuo Takahashi's lyrics are often about difficulties in human relationships, especially between different cultures and between men and women.
Ayuo Takahashi often uses texts by philosophers from Japan, the Middle East, and Europe, such as Dogen, Rumi, Kazantzakis, and others.
Ayuo Takahashi often writes on the liner notes of his CDs that he was influenced by the scholars of world myths and comparative religion, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung.