Short answers, pulled from the story.
Hitoshi Sakimoto is a Japanese composer and sound producer born on the 26th of February 1969 in Tokyo. He is best known for scoring Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII, and has composed soundtracks for well over 60 video games across his career, including Tactics Ogre, Vagrant Story, Valkyria Chronicles, and Odin Sphere.
Sakimoto began composing professionally in 1988, when he and Masaharu Iwata scored the shooter game Revolter for the NEC PC-8801. He had already been composing for games from around age 16, before that debut.
Basiscape is a music and sound production company Sakimoto founded in October 2002 after leaving Square. He has said he started the company to have more freedom in choosing his projects. It launched with three members and expanded in the mid-2000s; the company also launched a record label in 2009.
Sakimoto created a synthesizer driver called "Terpsichorean" for his 1988 debut game Revolter. The driver was adopted across many games in the Japanese game market in the early 1990s, spreading his technical influence well beyond the titles he composed directly.
Sakimoto has cited "old techno and progressive rock" as his primary influences, particularly the Japanese synthpop group Yellow Magic Orchestra, after whom he named his early pseudonym "YmoH.S". He also names American jazz musician Chick Corea as a major influence, and during Final Fantasy XII cited Nobuo Uematsu as his biggest inspiration.
Sakimoto appeared at a Play! A Video Game Symphony event at Orchestra Hall in Detroit in July 2006, alongside Yoko Shimomura and Michael Salvatori. He has a long relationship with the Eminence Symphony Orchestra, participating in their Passion event in December 2006, A Night in Fantasia 2007 in April 2007, and the Japan-exclusive Destiny: Reunion concert in July 2007.