Laura Shigihara

Biography

Shigihara, whose mother is French-American and father is Japanese, grew up in both the United States and Japan. She was classically trained on the piano for 11 years, and taught herself guitar and drums. During college, she was given an old version of Cakewalk which she used to start learning about mixing, arranging, and production by recreating old video game soundtracks and composing her own songs. After a friend leaked her original material to record companies in Japan, Shigihara was offered record contracts as a singer there, but ended up turning them down for personal reasons.

Shortly after returning to the US, Shigihara took a job as the sound director for a company that produced an audio talk show and English learning materials through Apple Japan. She also released a studio album and composed her first video game soundtrack for a small casual game called Wobbly Bobbly. She was so excited to be working on a video game that she told them she’d work for free. The company liked her work and paid her to create music for several subsequent projects. From there she built up her portfolio and has worked on over 25 published titles including Plants vs. Zombies, Ghost Harvest, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and the indie RPG To the Moon. In her spare time, she has also been developing a music-based role playing game called Melolune, and has recently participated in Akira Yamaoka's charity album Play for Japan where she contributed an original song called "Jump", alongside other composers like Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda. On 16 November 2011, she released her single “Cube Land” in relation to Minecraft and Plants vs. Zombies. In addition to her singing talents - she created the game Rakuen.

Discography

Shigihara's works include: