■He stayed in the USA in 1973 and 1974 thanks to the support given by the Rockfeller Foundation. His interests in jazz and rock music, which he had been studying jazz from Mr. Sadao Watanabe since 1967, expanded significantly during his stay in New York and San Francisco. He came back to Japan in 1974 with the above development in his attitudes to composition, when NHK, the quasi-governmental broadcasting company, asked him to compose a new TV opera on the basis of the famous Japanese novel, "Tenshu monogatari", or " The Tale of Himeji Castle", by Kyoka Izumi. This was the piece that marks Mr. Mizuno's own style of music, which is a balanced combination of orchestral music, improvisation, jazz, rock, traditional Japanese, folk and popular music. All of these elements are beautifully blended, gracefully matured, and pleasantly appealing to the listeners. He added his soul of music to the original soul of novel when he composed "Tenshu monogatari". This opera was later arranged to the stage opera, and the opera is now quite famous in Japan now.
■In the area of orchestral music,his representative one is "Symphonic Metamorphoses".He spent 26 years to complete this pieces of four parts, each of which was introduced separately on different dates. The last part was completed in 1987, but the entire piece was performed for the first time in September, 1992, at Makuhari Messe in Chiba. This is one of the largest pieces of music all over the world in consideration of three hours of playing time and 700 members of instrumental players and chorus singers.
■He has been quite active in recent years in the areas of opera and symphonic music, "The Beauty and the Beast" and "MINAMO" for opera, and Symphonic poem"Summer", Symphony No.1, 2 and 3 for orchestra. Mr. Mizuno has been now developing a new area of his music in the musical. He completed the musical "Innocent Moon" in 1999. The first performance in September had a good reputation. We would be able to expect new sounds of his music.