喜多郎

Kitarō (喜多郎, born February 4, 1953) is a Japanese musician, composer and multi-instrumentalist who is regarded as a pioneer of New Age music.

His real name is Masanori Takahashi (Kitarō is a stage name that means "happy"). He was born in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, Japan and is a graduate of Toyohashi Commercial High School. After graduating, Kitaro moved to Tokyo to experience and become a part of the music scene, and it was there that he discovered the synthesizer. His first synthesizer was analog, and he recalls having “just loved the analog sound that it made compared to today's digital sound”.