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Image source: Wikimedia Commons.
Whether as an international pop star, music producer or composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto was always an innovator. In the late 1970s, as a member of the Japanese techno pop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, Sakamoto helped pioneer electronic music with the band’s influence extending well into the present day. As a prolific solo artist, Sakamoto expressed his own wide-ranging influences, from Debussy to John Cage to Balinese gamelan, moving between and blending melodic, experimental and ambient forms across an eclectic discography that defined and transformed world music. In 1983, with no prior experience, he composed his first film score for Nagisa Ôshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) (in which he also made his screen debut), a groundbreaking electronic work that spawned a hit single and earned Sakamoto a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. Other film scores followed, including his Oscar-winning contribution to Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1989), Pedro Almodóvar’s High Heels (1991) and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant (2016). Sakamoto spent his career exploring the intersections of music, sound, images and technology. The Archive presents this three-night tribute, understanding that it captures only a fragment of Sakamoto’s boundless creative spirit.
