What Am I Listening to on those headphones?

You know, for a while now, I've had this feeling that nobody does jazz like the Japanese. Why? Because I listen to a lot of anime music. Now, I enjoy big band, I enjoy soundtrack music. In fact, when I buy a cd, chances are better that I'll be buying a soundtrack to a film than the latest Michelle Branch offering. Don't get me wrong, I like Michelle Branch, but I love listening to music that evokes a certain emotion in me, and that's exactly what soundtracks are intended to do.
Enter Yoko Kanno.
I first heard of Yoko Kanno when her name came up on the credits of "Cowboy Bebop" as the composer of the music. That music is just awesome. And it sounds like jazz. And it's really good. And I thought to myself "this guy writes some awesome music". (Yeah, I'm a sexist - see my earlier posts, in my defense, Japanese names are often written last name first, and besides, I don't know a lot of Japanese names off the top of my head - yeah, yeah, Yoko Ono, yeah, yeah, I don't know what I was thinking).
Of course, what I didn't realize was that I enjoyed her music before I ever heard of Cowboy Bebop. She also wrote the music to "Macross Plus", "Jin-Roh", and "Vision of Escaflowne". And now she's written the absolutely awesome music of "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" (GitS:SAC). Curious? Maybe you should be. The link above goes connects to a site with Real audio streams of her music. My personal favorites are "Tank"and "Rush" on the first Cowboy Bebop disc, "The Real Folk Blues" on the Cowboy Bebop: Vitaminless disc, "After, in the dark - Torch Song" on the first Macross Plus disc, and on the first GitS:SAC disc, "Inner Universe", "Velveteen", and "Where Does This Ocean Go".
And when you listen, remember a couple of things.
These are all the same composer.
She's Japanese.
And as far as I know, she's never had any formal musical training.