Paul Chihara received his doctorate degree (DMA) from Cornell University, and also studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Ernst Pepping in Berlin and Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood. The founder and chairman of the UCLA Film Music Program (Visual Media), he is a UCLA Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Music, and is currently on the faculty at New York University, and resident film composer. The first composer-in-residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under Sir Neville Marriner, he has also been composer-in-residence with the San Francisco Ballet and served as music director of the renowned Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles. He was a new music advisor to Zubin Mehta at the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1971 to 1976.

Chihara has composed scores for over 100 motion pictures and television series, working with directors such as Sidney Lumet, Louis Malle, Arthur Penn, and Michael Ritchie. He worked as a music supervisor at The Walt Disney Studios from 1996 to 2002. He was composer-in-residence at the Marlboro Music Festival of 1971 alongside Tōru Takemitsu. Also active on Broadway, Chihara served as musical consultant and arranger for Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, and was composer for James Clavell’s Shogun, the Musical. He is a trustee and the orchestrator for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in New York.

In 1962 Chihara received The Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Award, and has since been the recipient of many other prizes and commissions, including from the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, among many others. In 2008 he was awarded Composer of the Year by the Classical Recording Foundation in New York.