Yuka Kitamura
Kitamura was born April 27, 1990.
While not much is known about her earlier life, a 2021 article about the composer reads "It is impossible to say that a woman of her talent didn't have an education."
Kitamura's contributions to video game compositions began in 2013 with works such as "Armored Core: Verdict Day" before her more recent renown works.
As of now, much of her work has been attributed to the most recent release of 2022's up-and-coming Game of the Year: "Elden Ring", released on February 25, 2022, developed by FromSoftware, and published by BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment JP. Much of her recent updates can be found on her Twitter.
Despite preferring to live a life outside of the spotlight, much of Kitamura's presence surged after the release of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in 2019. This was one of the first franchises she had recorded her own vocals, cello, and violin, which helped to make the compositions more personal.
Kitamura had described this project to be complicated in relation to her older, and still famous, projects of the Souls and Bloodborne games despite Sekiro being based in Sengoku-era feudal Japan. Much of the instrumentation used was based around traditional Japanese sounds, such as the bellow from a taiko and bass wadaiko drum, or the wispiness of a shakuhachi flute.
The process began with a simple sound, and build the context of the soundtrack off of it. It was important to keep in mind all of the context relating to a track - whether it be based around a character, a boss fight, ambiance, or anything in between.
"In this exclusive Game Informer video, From Software composer Yuka Kitamura takes us inside the process of creating the new soundtrack for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and how it compares to her work on Dark Souls and Bloodborne."
- Game Informer
Career Tracks and Collaborations
Kitamura's work on Dark Souls included significant collaborators and contributors, such as Motoi Sakuraba (Resonance of Fate, Star Ocean Series), Tsukasa Saitoh (Bloodbourne), and Nobuyoshi Suzuki (Bloodbourne), with whokm she had worked on with prior projects.
Most recently with Elden Ring, Kitamura has been in collaboration with American acclaimed writer George R.R. Martin and FromSoft's Hidetaka Miyazaki.
In recent years, much of Kitamura's works have been performed by live orchestral groups, such as Tokyo Philharmonic, as well as Sweedish Radio Symphony in 2016.
Kitamura's works have both been nominated and won several awards.
Whether nominated and cited by publications claiming her works to be contributions to the greatest games of all time, or receiving physical awards for her work, Yuka Kitamura's works continue to amaze the video game scene.
In 2016, Kitamura and her team won the NAVGTR award for the original score of Dark Souls III. Additionally, she has been nominated for franchise Original Dramatic Score awards and Sound Editing in a Game Cinema, as notated by her IMDb profile. After the success of Elden Ring, we can expect several more awards in the near future.
