TOMIYAMA Siyoh

Born in 1961 Siyoh Tomiyama began playing pop music on the guitar at the age of twelve. Around the age of seventeen, he started to get involved seriously with solo guitar, that is, the classical guitar. He naturally started to compose after several months. Mr Tomiyama was in the second grade of the Mathematics Department in Yamagata University when he decided to seriously learn about composition under a private tutor. He was learning harmony briefly under Ichiroo Kudoo until he graduated from university. After moving to Tokyo in 1983, he frequently visited the big music library in Kunitachi University to listen to and analyze famous works of now and past. He also read many books on the theory of composition. Then he entered in a diploma course of Classical Guitar Department at Tokyo Conservatoire Shobi. Since he was the only student in the history of the course, there was no formal curriculum for him. So he could take all classes of the diploma course of Composition Department. Many famous composers were teaching there. One of them was famous Akira Nishimura. He got his influence and was caught by the fascination of ethnic music. He listened to and played various music from around the world at an institution for ethnic music in Kichijooji, Tokyo. After assimilating the essence of ethnic music, Siyoh Tomiyama purposely tried to compose a piece not using any of the musical techniques that he had been learning or discovering over the years. It took two years to finish this work Inishie Matsuri. But these efforts were rewarded by the obtaining of the “Takei prize” in 1992, a prize awarded to the Japanese person who wrote the best guitar piece in that year. While he could compose smoothly, he once had to give up playing guitar because of Dystonia. After about 15 years, in the last month of the year 2006, he came back to the guitar playing field. Now he has almost fixed his finger’s problem and got energy to write guitar pieces again. http://www.spiritmusic.net