Nobuo Uematsu (植松伸夫)

Nobuo Uematsu (植松 伸夫, Uematsu Nobuo?, born March 21, 1959) is a Japanese video game music composer and musician, best known for scoring numerous Final Fantasy titles. He is one of the most famous and respected composers in the video game community. Uematsu is a self-taught musician; he learned to play the piano at the age of eleven or twelve, with Elton John as his biggest influence. Uematsu joined Square (later Square Enix) in 1986, where he became well-known for composing music for the Final Fantasy series. After nearly 20 years in the company, he left Square Enix in 2004 and founded his own company, called Smile Please. He has since composed music for video games primarily developed by Square Enix and Mistwalker as a freelancer. Several soundtracks and arranged albums from Uematsu's video game scores have been released. As a result of his success with video game music, various pieces of his work have been performed in concerts over the world. He formed a rock band called The Black Mages in 2003, who play arranged rock versions of Uematsu's compositions. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.