Ryuichi Sakamoto

World-renowned Japanese composer and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto has died at the age of 71 after battling cancer, his management company KAB America Inc.

He worked continuously until his later years, including the score for 2015 film 'The Revenant.' Four years later, he took home a Golden Globe and Oscar for best music for his score for the 'The Last Emperor.' Sakamoto wrote the score and starred alongside David Bowie in the 1983 film 'Merry Christmas, Mr.

The renowned composer and producer has passed away aged 71.

[April 2, 2023] In 2014, Sakamoto was first diagnosed with throat cancer. Additionally, he composed the soundtrack for films such as The Last Emperor and The Revenant as well as 1983’s Merry Christmas, Mr Laurence in which he also starred in alongside David Bowie. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to his fans and all those who have supported his activities, as well as the medical professionals in Japan and the U.S. Born in 1952, Sakamoto took up piano from an early age and over the course of his creative career was a pioneer within electronic and ambient music. The post revealed that he passed away last week on 28 March.

Mr. Sakamoto, whose work with Yellow Magic Orchestra influenced electronic music, composed scores for “The Last Emperor” and “The Revenant.”

Mr. In later years, Mr. Nicolai, who layered glitchy electronics over Mr. “I just wanted to be showered in sound,” he said of the record. The group broke up in 1984, in part because Mr. In the 21st century, he began to focus again on more experimental work, inspired by a new generation of collaborators including the producer Fennesz and Mr. Nicolai, who performs under the name Alva Noto, Mr. “Perhaps it’s because people are looking for healing, for some answer to the stress of their country’s recession,” Mr. [synth-heavy title track](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9_9MZyQGo) remained one of Mr. Then came music for films by the director Bernardo Bertolucci, including “The Last Emperor” (1987) “The Sheltering Sky” (1990) and “Little Buddha (1993). [Nagisa Oshima](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/movies/nagisa-oshima-iconoclastic-filmmaker-dies-at-80.html) asked him to co-star, alongside David Bowie, in “Merry Christmas, Mr. Equally comfortable in futuristic techno, orchestral works, video game tracks and intimate piano solos, Mr.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, the composer who won an Oscar for The Last Emperor, died March 28 of cancer at 71.

Along with releasing the diary-like “12” in 2023, and being the subject of a various artists’ tribute album at the end of 2022, “To the Moon and Back,” Sakamoto was in the planning stages of “KAGAMI,” which is scheduled to have its New York premiere this summer at the Shed in New York. In February 2023, Sakamoto set his next soundtrack scoring job, to write the music for Palme d’Or-winning director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s forthcoming feature “Monster,” although the status of that work is unclear. “Ryuichi is very curious about new music, new forms,” said JC Chamboredon, the head of Sakamoto’s Milan label and a longtime confidant. Though Sakamoto collaborated with percussionist Tsuchitori Toshiyuki to release the experimental “Disappointment-Hateruma,” in 1975, it was a bourgeoning relationship with Takahashi (who died on January 11, 2023) and multi-instrumentalist Haruomi Hosono that brought the keyboardist his first fame. He composed the score for the opening ceremony for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain (telecast to a live audience of a billion-plus viewers), scored Bertolucci’s “The Sheltering Sky” Oliver Stone’s “Wild Palms” ABC television series, Brian De Palma’s “Snake Eyes” and more. It was not immediately clear whether the show will be altered following his death; either way, it will clearly take on a whole new poignance. [Ryuichi Sakamoto](https://variety.com/t/ryuichi-sakamoto/), the influential electronic music composer and member of the Yellow Magic Orchestra who won an Oscar for the score for “The Last Emperor” and composed the haunting score for “Merry Christmas Mr. Born in Tokyo on January 17, 1952, Sakamoto was something of a child prodigy, playing piano in his youth and while in high school presaging his later work in electronic music by studying the sounds of Japan’s commuter trains. Lawrence,” the story of a British colonel who tries to make peace between a Japanese camp commander, played by Sakamoto, and a British P.O.W., played by Bowie. in the following years — and beyond. However, by then the members had solo careers well underway, particularly Sakamoto, whose work on “Merry Christmas Mr. in electronic and ethnic music, and studied ethnomusicology with a desire to become a researcher in the traditional music of Japan, India and Africa.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, a world-renowned Japanese musician and actor who composed for Hollywood hits such as “The Last Emperor” and “The Revenant,” has died.

“How we make electricity is going to diversify, with fossil fuel and nuclear power declining,” Sakamoto told The Associated Press in an interview in 2012. At his home in New York, he gets electricity from a company that relies on renewables, he said. The statement expressed gratitude to the doctors who had treated him in the U.S. Sakamoto also left his mark as a pacifist and environmental activist. “To his final days, he lived with music,” it said. He was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014.

With Yellow Magic Orchestra, he paved the way for electropop and hip-hop but was far happier as a backroom boffin than an electronic pinup.

In the late 70s, the other members of Yellow Magic Orchestra had called him the Professor, a jokey nickname that contrasted Sakamoto’s intellectual bearing with his unwanted role as the group’s main heart-throb. By then, their music had found its way into the collections of DJs and producers in New York’s burgeoning hip-hop scene – they were apparently astonished when the audience on Soul Train began breakdancing when they performed Computer Games – although it was a track from one of the solo albums Sakamoto had begun releasing concurrent with his career in YMO that had the biggest long-term impact. If Sakamoto had left it at that and returned to modern classical music, he would already have earned himself a place among the era’s greatest pop innovators. Both bands shared an obsession with technology – Yellow Magic Orchestra were pioneering in their use of sequencers and samplers and they introduced the world to the sound of the Roland TR-808 drum machine – and a belief that being cutting-edge experimentalists didn’t preclude them from writing fantastic pop songs. On 1989’s Beauty and 1991’s Heartbeat, it sometimes seemed as if he was constructing his own brand of the exotica that had entranced YMO, blending eastern, western and African influences together, assembling eclectic and improbable guest lists that, on Beauty alone, included Youssou N’Dour, Robbie Robertson, Robert Wyatt, Brian Wilson and Prince protege Jill Jones. Yellow Magic Orchestra went on to become both the biggest band in Japan – inspiring a degree of paparazzi attention and screaming fervour among fans that Sakamoto seems to have loathed every minute of – and the first Japanese artists to find more than novelty or cult status in the west. And, like Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra proved vastly influential – or rather, it took the rest of the world a little while to catch up: there was something telling about the fact that Solid State Survivor wasn’t released in the UK until 1982, at the height of the synth-pop wave that YMO had presaged. Both YMO and Kraftwerk were interested in the detournement of Anglo-American pop: just as Kraftwerk borrowed from the Beach Boys on Autobahn, so YMO covered the Beatles’ Day Tripper and Archie Bell and the Drells’ Tighten Up, the latter in cartoonish Japanese accents. On the cover of Solid State Survivor, they dressed in red Mao suits, enjoying a drink with an effigy of the late dictator. At university, he studied the work of modern composers Boulez, Stockhausen and Ligeti; he had a particular interest in the challenging electronic compositions of Iannis Xenakis. If he was going to have a role in the Japanese pop world at all, it was in the background, using his keyboard skills and interest in the fast-developing world of synthesisers to find employment as a session musician. [Ryuichi Sakamoto](https://www.theguardian.com/music/ryuichi-sakamoto) was not a man cut out to be a pop star.

The electronic music pioneer and multi-instrumentalist wrote the film scores for 'The Revenant', 'The Last Emperor', and 'Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence', ...

(The work won a BAFTA for Best Film Music.) It also serves as something of a high water mark for a This led to collaborations with the British artist David Sylvian (of the band Japan) and American guitar hero Adrian Belew, who worked with the bands King Crimson, Talking Heads, and also David Bowie. In 1978, Sakamoto released his first solo album, Thousand Knives, which continued to push the envelope of electronic music and new technologies, but also incorporated more of a jazz fusion element. Two tracks from the album were released as a combined single, “Firecracker,” and they even appeared on Soul Train. He studied both electronic music and ethnomusicology at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, which works as an early expression of his omnivorous tastes. After years as a session keyboardist, he co-founded the Yellow Magic Orchestra with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi in 1978.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, the Oscar-winning composer who scored films like The Last Emperor and co-founded Yellow Magic Orchestra, has died at 71.

“The big theme of him is curiosity,” Noto said of Sakamoto in 2021. In addition to starring in the film alongside David Bowie, he won the BAFTA award for Best Score for his work on the film in 1984. [Yellow Magic Orchestra](https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/how-japanese-ambient-music-became-a-thing-in-america.html) with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi in 1978, releasing hits like [“Computer Game.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3XqVBdjNM0&ab_channel=guamshady) A pioneer of electronic music and synthpop in the 1970s, Sakamoto began his film-scoring career with 1983’s Merry Christmas, Mr.

Acclaimed composer and former member of Yellow Magic Orchestra Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose legacy includes the Oscar-winning score to 'The Revenant', ...

“In accordance with Sakamoto's strong wishes, the funeral service was held among his close family members. Kab America Inc said on his official website in a statement about the acclaimed experimental performeer’s life, artistic philosophy and huge legacy – which includes a series of masterwork film scores including ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. “He lived with music until the very end.

Japanese composer and electronic music pioneer behind the soundtrack for the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence.

With the Austrian guitarist and composer Christian Fennesz he recorded Sala Santa Cecilia (2005), Cendre (2007) and Flumina (2011). He and Byrne teamed up to record the single [Psychedelic Afternoon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUuKhMS-Aek) to aid tsunami survivors. Thomas Dolby featured on the pulsating [Field Work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdq-Pn6xPBE) from Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia (1986), the track accompanied by an ingeniously conceived video, while for Neo Geo (1987) Sakamoto enlisted [Iggy Pop](https://www.theguardian.com/music/iggy-pop), Bill Laswell, [Bootsy Collins](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/apr/14/bootsy-collins-funkadelic-funk) and Sly Dunbar. YMO paused their activities in 1984, though the trio continued to collaborate on each other’s solo work, and they reformed to make the album Technodon (1993). He formed a group of musicians called NML (No More Landmines), which featured [Firecracker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkkFST5qrLg), from their 1978 debut album, was itself sampled in Afrika Bambaataa’s Death Mix. Born in Tokyo, Ryuichi was the only child of Keiko (nee Shimomura), a hat designer, and Kazuki Sakomoto, a literary editor. For the opening of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics he provided [El Mar Mediterrani](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4AzXwtfHck). The soundtrack, which won him a Bafta for best film music, contained the Sakamoto/Sylvian composition [Forbidden Colours](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1YkHJJi-tc), a vocal version of the film’s main theme, which was a Top 20 hit in Britain. [electronica](https://www.theguardian.com/music/electronicmusic), Sakamoto was able to combine his skills as an academically trained musician with an aptitude for electronic music and an ear for countless musical styles. [Andy Partridge](https://www.theguardian.com/music/xtc) from XTC, and the electrofunk track Riot in Lagos proved inspirational for the likes of Mantronix and Afrikaa Bambaataa. He won an Academy Award (along with his fellow composers David Byrne and Cong Su) for his soundtrack to

Ryuichi Sakamoto, a world-renowned Japanese musician and actor who composed for Hollywood hits such as “The Last Emperor” and “The Revenant,” has died.

“How we make electricity is going to diversify, with fossil fuel and nuclear power declining,” Sakamoto told The Associated Press in an interview in 2012. At his home in New York, he gets electricity from a company that relies on renewables, he said. The statement expressed gratitude to the doctors who had treated him in the U.S. Sakamoto also left his mark as a pacifist and environmental activist. “To his final days, he lived with music,” it said. He was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014.

Twitter account Tech Product Bangers has compiled Nokia 8800 ringtones and alerts – most of which the late pioneering Japanese musician created.

[A Tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto: To The Moon and Back ](https://crackmagazine.net/article/album-reviews/to-the-moon-and-back-ryuichi-sakamoto-review/)was released last November to mark the musician’s 70th birthday, featuring reworked versions of his music by artists including Thundercat, Devonté Hynes, Alva Noto and David Sylvian. In addition to his film scores, extensive solo and collaborative releases and output as one third of Yellow Magic Orchestra, Sakamoto created many of the signature mobile phone ringtones and alerts for the Nokia 8800 back in 2005. Please take a listen, some lovely sounds here.”