Hiroki Kikuta

Hiroki Kikuta is a Japanese video game composer and game designer. His major works are Secret of Mana, Seiken Densetsu 3, Skaigi, and Koudelka, for which he also acted as producer and concept designer. He has composed music for seven other games, and worked as a concept designer in addition to composer for the unreleased MMORPG Chou Bukyo Taisen. He became interested in music at an early age, but earned a degree in Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Cultural Anthropology from Kansai University. He spent the next few years working first as a manga illustrator, then as a composer for anime series, before coming to work for Square in 1991.

Kikuta was born in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. He first became interested in music at the age of ten after hearing songs by Emerson, Lake amp Palmer. He began writing his own songs two years later, after listening to country blues music it inspired him to study acoustic guitar and write his own songs in hope of one day becoming a singersongwriter. He was also inspired as a child by music from movies. It was not until he got a synthesizer, however, that he began to feel his potential as a composer. Kikuta went on to earn an interdisciplinary degree in Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Cultural Anthropology from Kansai University, which he attended from 1981 to 1984. He never received any form of formal musical training, and instead taught himself by reading music theory books and listening to a wide variety of musical genres.

Source: Wikipedia