Kumi Tanioka

Written in 2005

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Like most of the videogame musicians, Ms Tanioka also had piano lessons as a child. Music was also a topic of her diploma, although she did not study music as her main topic. However, she liked music and very soon in her life she knew that she someday wanted to create music for a Final Fantasy game.

In 1998, she joined SquareEnix and took part in the Soundtrack of Chocobo's Dungeon (Chocobo no Fushigina Dungeon 2) along with many famous musicians such as Nobuo Uematsu, Kenji Ito and others. She continued this way of just participating in Soundtracks for quite some time. Yet, she caught attention with the work she did in Final Fantasy XI that she was allowed to create her first soundtrack in 2003. Her work in Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is very famous right now so that she has also been allowed to create the Soundtrack of Square-Enix's new PlayStation 2 game "Code Age Commander"

Kumi Tanioka is a master at creating peaceful, slightly melancholic melodies with mostly classical instruments. You'll rarely hear upbeat music from her - yet she is able to create a dangerous atmosphere or epic boss melodies. Sometimes, her work resembles Hitoshi Sakamoto (Vagrant Story, Breath of Fire V) a little, sometimes you think you listen to a tune created by Hiroki Kikuta (Secret of Mana, Seiken Densetsu 3). For being active in the game music scene for such a short time, her style is already almost perfect, her tracks are unique and you're going to catch yourself whistling her remarkable melodies.

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