Yoko Shimomura

Yoko Shimomura is a Japanese video game composer as well as the composer of the entire Adventures in the Magic Kingdom soundtrack. She has been described as "the most famous female video game music composer in the world".

History
Yoko Shimomura was born in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan on October 19, 1967. She developed an interest for music at a young age, and started taking piano lessons "at the age of four or five". She began composing her own music by playing the piano randomly and pretending to compose, eventually coming up with her own pieces, the first of which she claims to still remember how to play. Shimomura attended Osaka College of Music, and graduated as a piano major in 1988. Upon graduation, Shimomura intended to become a piano instructor and was extended a job offer to become a piano teacher at a music store, but as she had been an avid gamer for many years she decided to send some samples of her work to various video game companies that were recruiting at the university. Capcom invited her in for an audition and interview, and she was offered a job there. Her family and instructors were dismayed with her change in focus, as video game music was not well respected, and "they had paid [her] tuition for an expensive music school and couldn't understand why [she] would accept such a job", but Shimomura accepted the job at Capcom anyway