Koichi Sugiyama
 Biography and Personal Information
Koichi Sugiyama (romanized, alt. Kouchi Sugiyama)
was born on April 11, 1931 in Japan's capital city Tokyo.
Later he was student at the highly notable Universtiy of Tokyo, where
he graduated with all honors.
Way back in 1958, he composed his first soundtracks for the japanese television.
Before 1986, when Dragon Quest should hit
the japanese videogame market several works appeared under his name:
For the unknown japanese home computer PC-8801: Angelus, Wingman, Ghandara etc.
For the retro tv animes Space Runaway Ideon, Cyborg 009, Patlabor, Syrius and Gatchaman ("Kagaku Ninja Tai Gatchaman" Cinema Movie).
For the 1st & 2nd TV season (not the OVA) of the widely known anime Magic Knight Rayearth, together with Matsuo Hayato.
For musicals, tv series & commercials, pop artists and some horse-racing venues.
He even composed and wrote a Dragon Quest ballet, which is available on DVD
and did the Godzilla Movie Soundtrack "Gojira Tai Biorante" (Godzilla VS Biolante) from 1990.
But anyway, the most famous work, is the huge musical opus for the matchless Dragon Quest Series.
Especially his continuous symphonic suites with the London Symphony Orchestra & the Tokyo Philharmonic are outstanding.
He was the leading protagonist who brought videogame music into orchestral halls, also because of his 5
game music concerts (OGC - Orchestral Game Concert), which were
invented, moderated & partly conducted by himself. Over 16 composers (Nobuo Uematsu, Yoko Shimomura, Koji Kondo and many more) were involved in
these unforgettable live recordings. Additionally he held 18 Family Classic Concerts 'til now.
Besides the 7 Dragon Quests Sugiyama composed music for various other (mostly ENIX) games like
E.V.O ~ The Search for Eden, Half-Boiled Hero & Itadaki Street 2 (See the list below for the whole game-o-graphy).
And his legend lives on. Spring 2004 a milestone in the Playstation2 history:
Dragon Quest V: Tenku no Hanayome Remake was one of the first rpgs to be released with
a fully orchestrated soundtrack.  The recorded album SVWC 7201 was released on his own label "SUGIlabel", which
was founded on the 23th June 2004. Who knows what the future brings?
Dragon Quest VIII is announced for winter 2004, when the fans can hopefully experience Mr. Sugiyama's enormous talent once more.
The black silhouette you see above is the official logo of SUGIlabel�.
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© G. Vallant 2004 | All rights reserved
Dragon Quest� is a product of SquareEnix
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