Musical artist
Kenichiro Fukui (福井 健一郎, Fukui Ken'ichirō) is a Japanese video game composer and electronic musician. Before working at Square Enix, he was employed at Konami. He was also an arranger and a keyboardist in the band The Black Mages. Additionally, Fukui arranged Angela Aki's "Kiss Me Good-Bye" from Final Fantasy XII. In October 2007, he left Square Enix to become a lecturer, although he continued to work with The Black Mages until the band dissolved in 2010, and continued to do freelance work with video games.[1] His Konami Kukeiha Club nickname was "Funiki Fukui". He lives in Yokohama, Japan.
Biography
Fukui was born on March 4, 1970, in Hyōgo Prefecture.[3] He joined the video game company Konami in 1991. While there, he contributed to the soundtracks of Lethal Enforcers, G.I. Joe and Violent Storm. He was also one of the keyboardists for the Kukeiha Club, and played in the live event at the Budokan in Tokyo.[1]
In 1995, he moved to Osaka to join "Solid", a subsidiary of Square (now Square Enix). He was later transferred to Square's main office in Tokyo. While there, he wrote music for games such as Einhänder, Front Mission 5: Scars of the War, and Project Sylpheed, and did arrangements for Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and Hanjuku Hero 4: 7-Jin no Hanjuku Hero. He played the keyboard and organ for 2005's Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song, the first game he worked on for which he neither composed nor arranged the music.[4]
In 2000, Fukui and Tsuyoshi Sekito formed an experimental partnership to compose music for the video game All Star Pro-Wrestling in a rock style. After the game's success, the two continued to compose in the same style. In 2002, Fukui and Sekito decided to arrange some of the compositions of Nobuo Uematsu, the primary composer for the music of the Final Fantasy series. Uematsu, a fan of rock music, enjoyed these arrangements, and Fukui and Sekito asked him to join them in making a rock band. Declining at first due to feeling too busy with his composing duties and attempts to become a music producer with his Smile Please label, Uematsu agreed to join them in a single live performance as a keyboardist, and afterwards decided to join the two in making The Black Mages; Fukui and Sekito had refused to start one if Uematsu was not involved as one of the musicians.[1] The band went on to produce three albums before dissolving in 2010; while some of the members went on to form the Earthbound Papas, Fukui was not one of them.[5][6]
In 2007, Fukui was appointed at the HAL College of Tokyo (which opened in spring 2009), to teach classes relating to music composition and performance.[1][7]
