Seiji Ozawa (1935–2024) was a Japanese conductor. Born in Mukden, then part of Japanese-controlled Manchuria, he studied under Hideo Saito at the Toho Gakuen School of Music and won the Besancon International Competition for Young Conductors in 1959. After further training with Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein, he led the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony before serving as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for twenty-nine years. He later directed the Vienna State Opera and developed the Saito Kinen Orchestra and its annual music festival in Matsumoto. In “Absolutely on Music: Conversations,” created with Haruki Murakami, Ozawa discusses conducting, interpretation, rehearsals, and the differences between recorded performances. The book received the Kobayashi Hideo Prize.
