Hayato Matsuo

Hayato Matsuo is a Japanese arranger composer orchestrator and musician. Hayato is a composer arranger and orchestrator for both the video game industry and the anime industry. He has worked on titles such as Front Mission 3 Final Fantasy XII the Shenmue Series and Magic Knight Rayearth. Inspired by his mother who was a piano teacher he graduated from the music composition department of Tokyo University of the Arts. While in college he composed for the band GClef and occasionally stood in for the members of the band. Upon graduating he went to work under Sugiyama Kouichi the composer of the popular Dragon Quest video game series arranging his pieces for Dragon Quest anime shows and soundtracks. In 1991 Hayato began to work as a video game music composer himself writing the score to Master of Monsters. Over the next few years he worked as an independent composer on several games and anime series including Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen. In 1995 he joined the independent music composition group Imagine. He has continued since then to compose and orchestrate works for over 20 games and anime shows as well as the television show Kamen Rider 555 and a few pieces a part of original albums.