Toshio Mashima | Compositeurs

Toshio Mashima (1949 to 2016) was a Japanese composer, arranger and tutor. Toshio Mashima was born on February 21st 1949 in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. Although he initially studied engineering as a college course, he interrupted this to learn music, graduating from the Kanagawa University and taking the "Yamaha Band Director" course, going on to do a major in technology. He also studied music composition under Bin Kaneda and 'jazz' theory under Makoto Uchibori. He graduated in 1971, and went on to play the trombone in 'jazz' and pop bands, following which he worked as an assistant to Naohiro Iwai and started to focus on writing compositions, especially for bands. Some of Mashima's more notable band pieces included the symphonic poem "Seascape" (selected as a 1985 All Japan Band Competition test piece), a 1991 test piece called "Coral Blue", and the 1997 test piece "Sweet Breeze in May". Others included "Mirage I", "Jacob's Ladder to a Crescent" and "Mirage a Paris". These were eventually published in Europe, and also sold in America. He had more recently composed for the television and film genres, and his last position was serving as a musical instructor at the Institute of Education, Sobi (as well as working as a special instructor at the Yamaha Music School). Mashima also produced significant transcriptions of Gershwin's "Cuban Overture", Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade Symphonic Suite", and Debussy's "L'isle Joyeuse". He was honoured with an award in the composition section of the 7th Academic Society of Japan for Wind and Percussion bands competition. Toshio Mashima died from cancer in Japan on April 21st 2016, at the age of 67.