Ryuichi Sakamoto

2023 - 4 - 2

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Image courtesy of "NPR"

Ryuichi Sakamoto, a godfather of electronic pop, has died (NPR)

The influential Japanese composer died March 28 from cancer. A wide-ranging musician, the Yellow Magic Orchestra co-founder was a synth-pop idol and the ...

Throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, he collaborated with a wide array of international musicians, including Thomas Dolby, Youssou N'Dour, Iggy Pop, Jaques Morelenbaum, Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) and an especially frequent partner, singer-songwriter and experimental composer David Sylvian. He also wrote the scores for Pedro Almodovar's High Heels in 1991, and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel in 2006 and The Revenant in 2015, among others. But, I am hoping to make music for a little while longer." But I know that I want to make more music. Sakamoto also wrote the movie's score, his first. At his initial meeting with Oshima, Sakamoto told Afrika Bambaataa sampled their "Firecracker" for his "Death Mix (Part 2)." By the time Sakamoto reached university to study composition, his musical life was already following multiple paths simultaneously. As a teenager, he became enamored of the work of Claude Debussy — a composer who himself had been inspired by Asian musical aesthetics, including that of Japan. YMO proved to be an enormous cultural force not just in Japan, but internationally. Sakamoto died on March 28 after a multi-year battle with cancer, according to a statement published on his website Sunday. He began taking piano lessons when he was 6 years old, and later started writing his own music.

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Image courtesy of "The Guardian"

Ryuichi Sakamoto: the avant gardist who became a groundbreaking ... (The Guardian)

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.

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Image courtesy of "The Guardian"

Ryuichi Sakamoto, Japanese pop pioneer and Oscar-winning ... (The Guardian)

Sakamoto was one of Japan's most successful musicians, acclaimed for work in Yellow Magic Orchestra as well as solo albums and film scores.

[The Last Emperor](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/apr/15/the-last-emperor) (in which he also had an acting role), he collaborated with Bernardo Bertolucci again for The Last Buddha, and with Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence director Nagisa Oshima for Gohatto. In 1999 he debuted the multimedia opera project Life, in collaboration with artist Shiro Takatani with contributions from Bertolucci, Pina Bausch and more. [Japan](https://www.theguardian.com/world/japan) – in 1980, two of their albums stayed at No 1 and No 2 in the charts for seven weeks, and they had seven Top 5 albums during their career. He and Takatani extended the concept into installation work from 2007 onwards. He took no further acting roles, aside from appearing as a film director in Rain, a music video for Madonna. Sakamoto also starred in the film as a prisoner of war camp commander. He acted alongside David Bowie in the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence and composed its [celebrated theme](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9_9MZyQGo), the first in a series of film scores including Oscar-winning work in 1987 with David Byrne and Cong Su for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. In 2019, he composed the music for an episode of dystopian TV drama series Black Mirror. He was born in Tokyo in 1952, and began taking piano lessons aged six, later attending Tokyo University of the Arts to study music. He also scored two films by Brian De Palma (Snake Eyes and Femme Fatale), plus Wild Palms for Oliver Stone, High Heels for Pedro Almodóvar, the 1990 film adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, and more. Michael Jackson covered their song Behind the Mask and intended to include it on Thriller, but a royalties disagreement prevented it. He trained on early synthesisers, and enthused by everything from Debussy to Kraftwerk, began working on various musical projects, including with Hosono and Takahashi.

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Image courtesy of "CNN"

World-renowned Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto dies at age ... (CNN)

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.

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Image courtesy of "Crack Magazine"

Ryuichi Sakamoto has died (Crack Magazine)

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.

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Image courtesy of "ABC News"

Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto dies at 71 (ABC News)

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. and Japan, as well as to all his fans around the world. “To his final days, he lived with music,” it said. He was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014.

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Image courtesy of "Le Soleil"

Le compositeur japonais Ryuichi Sakamoto est mort à 71 ans (Le Soleil)

Il a composé des musiques de films inoubliables, inlassablement défriché en pionnier les sons numériques et milité avec ferveur pour l'environnement: le ...

Marié et divorcé à deux reprises, Ryuichi Sakamoto était notamment le père de la chanteuse de J-pop Miu Sakamoto, née en 1980 de son union avec la chanteuse et pianiste japonaise Akiko Yano. Il découvre le piano très jeune. «Je travaillais avec l’ordinateur à l’université et je jouais du jazz, j’achetais de la musique psychédélique West Coast et les premiers disques de Kraftwerk l’après-midi, et la nuit je jouais du folk. Tout en menant des études d’ethnomusicologie et de composition, ce qui lui vaudra au Japon le surnom respectueux de « professeur », il commence à se produire sur scène dans le Tokyo bouillonnant des années 1970. Le grand public international l’a découvert avec ses musiques de films, à commencer par celle de Furyo de Nagisa Oshima (1983), film subversif sur un camp de prisonniers en Asie durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, où Ryuichi Sakamoto brille aussi en tant qu’acteur au côté de David Bowie et Takeshi Kitano. Il a composé des musiques de films inoubliables, inlassablement défriché en pionnier les sons numériques et milité avec ferveur pour l'environnement: le foisonnant artiste Ryuichi Sakamoto, adulé dans son Japon natal, est mort d'un cancer le 28 mars à 71 ans.

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Image courtesy of "Rolling Stone"

Ryuichi Sakamoto, YMO Member and Oscar-Winning Composer ... (Rolling Stone)

Ryuichi Sakamoto, keyboardist for the pioneering Yellow Magic Orchestra and Oscar-winning composer of 'The Last Emperor,' has died at the age of 71.

But, I am hoping to make music for a little while longer,” he wrote in 2021. That album spawned the electro single “Riot in Lagos,” which in turn informed the music of Afrika Bambaataa and Mantronix. In 1987, director Bernardo Bertolucci enlisted Sakamoto, along with David Byrne and Chinese composer Cong Su, to create the score for his epic The Last Emperor. “I decided to cancel all the projects. … Of course, treatment was the most important thing and I had the most harsh, physically painful time in my life. “I began training in music when I was little and attended a music university, but I never wanted to do it professionally. “I had plenty of time not doing anything, maybe since I was early-20s or something, when I was a student. Lawrence; that film also marked Sakamoto’s first score, and would later win the BAFTA in that category. In 1978, Sakamoto — at the time a classically-trained session musician — along with drummer/singer Takahashi, and bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Haruomi Hosono (previously of the famed Japanese rock bands Apryl Fool and Happy End) joined forces to found the the supergroup Yellow Magic Orchestra. In 2014, Sakamoto was first diagnosed with throat cancer, resulting in a yearlong hiatus from music as he battled the disease. Then I joined the Yellow Magic Orchestra because I wanted to work with those two very talented musicians. 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.

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Image courtesy of "Le Monde"

Ryuichi Sakamoto, compositeur pionnier des musiques ... (Le Monde)

Le Japonais, pionnier des musiques électroniques et auteur de nombreuses musiques de films, est mort le 28 mars à 71 ans des suites d'un cancer détecté en ...

Il avait également fondé en 2007 More Trees, une ONG de gestion durable de forêts au Japon, aux Philippines et en Indonésie. Il multiplie les collaborations avec des artistes avant-gardistes, mais aussi avec des stars comme le punk Iggy Pop, la chanteuse cap-verdienne Cesaria Evora, le Brésilien Caetano Veloso ou encore le Sénégalais Youssou N’Dour. Il avait composé les bandes originales de Furyo, du Dernier Empereur…

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Image courtesy of "France Inter"

Ryūichi Sakamoto, virtuose du septième art, est mort (France Inter)

L'immense compositeur japonais, maestro du cinéma et des claviers, s'est éteint le 28 mars dernier des suites d'un cancer à l'âge de 71 ans.

Il y a quelques semaines à peine, Ryūichi Sakamoto dévoilait encore un ultime disque sobrement intitulé 12, douze chansons en forme de croquis musicaux qu'il enregistra tel un journal sonore pendant la bataille de deux ans et demi qu'il mena jusqu'au bout contre la maladie. Publié en 1978, ce disque avant-gardiste demeure encore aujourd'hui un véritable ovni, antérieur aux effluves pop du Yellow Magic Orchestra, et s’ouvre avec un titre de groove robotique particulièrement audacieux. L'année 1987 marque ensuite la consécration du Sakamoto au grand écran. Cette fougue expérimentale des débuts n’a jamais par la suite quitté cet artiste total, qui chercha régulièrement dans les nouveaux instruments (sampleurs, synthés, séquenceurs) la meilleure façon de sublimer piano et autres violons dans ses compositions. Encore jeune, ce féru des tous premiers synthétiseurs avait rencontré et popularisé dès les années 70 la musique électronique naissante avec son Yellow Magic Orchestra. "Il a vécu avec la musique jusqu'à la toute fin", a ajouté son équipe dans un communiqué, expliquant que l'artiste avait souhaité des funérailles discrètes réservées à son cercle familial.

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Image courtesy of "CBC.ca"

Ryuichi Sakamoto, world-renowned Japanese composer, dead at ... (CBC.ca)

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

At his home in New York, he gets electricity from a company that relies on renewables, he said. "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. The statement expressed gratitude to the doctors who had treated him in the U.S. "To his final days, he lived with music," it said. He was also an actor, starring in the BAFTA-winning 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr. Sakamoto was a world-class musician, winning an Oscar and Grammy for the 1987 movie The Last Emperor.

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Image courtesy of "Toronto Star"

Ryuichi Sakamoto dies at 71: Artists pay tribute to the influential ... (Toronto Star)

Best known for scoring Hollywood films such as “The Last Emperor,” the prolific musician was also a founding member of Yellow Magic Orchestra.

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","type":"text","isParagraph":true,"isHeading":false},{"type":"relatedStories","relatedStories":[]},{"type":"slimcut"},{"id":"1642516150264242177","type":"twitter_tweet"},{"text":"“The King is dead,” the Montreal-based indie rock band Stars wrote on Twitter." ","heading":"","fullWindow":false,"fullBleed":false,"showFullBleedOnMobile":false,"headColor":"","type":"html5mobile","textColor":"","mobileImageUrl":"","bgColor":"","imageUrl":"","registeredOnly":false,"linkUrl":"","aodaTitle":"Questlove IG","internalScroll":false,"displayStyle":"small-up"},{"text":"“His impact on music is truly incalculable,” wrote Toronto-based rapper Cadence Weapon.

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Image courtesy of "BBC News"

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Japanese electronic music maestro dies (BBC News)

The award-winning composer and producer, whose fans included David Bowie, has died aged 71.

As a student he was classically trained but later specialised in ethnomusicology at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. So the music goes around the world and comes full circle," he said in 2010. His film score for The Last Emperor, in 1987, won him an Oscar, a Grammy and a Golden Globe. Music is music." "After I wake up I start thinking, hmm, which music will I listen to," he said. Sometimes using electronics or blending with electronic sound can help to break this wall."

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Image courtesy of "PBS NewsHour"

Ryuichi Sakamoto, world-renowned composer and musician, dies at ... (PBS NewsHour)

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.

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Image courtesy of "The Globe and Mail"

Japan's Ryuichi Sakamoto, composer of The Last Emperor film ... (The Globe and Mail)

Oscar-winning Japanese composer famed for his scores for The Last Emperor, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and other films, has died aged 71.

His most celebrated work was 1987′s “The Last Emperor” – a film in which he also acted. Sakamoto, who was an anti-nuclear campaigner and environmental activist, took a break from work in 2014 for about a year to be treated for throat cancer. So the music goes around the world and comes full circle,” he told WNYC public radio in 2010. Sakamoto’s first score was for the 1983 film “Merry Christmas Mr. Introduced to the piano as a toddler, Sakamoto lived for music. He had been suffering from cancer, but kept working in his home studio whenever his health allowed, the statement added.

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Image courtesy of "Noovo Info"

Le compositeur japonais Ryuichi Sakamoto décède du cancer à 71 ... (Noovo Info)

Ryuichi Sakamoto, compositeur et acteur japonais de renommée mondiale qui a composé la trame sonore de succès hollywoodiens tels que «Le Dernier Empereur» ...

«La façon dont nous produisons de l'électricité va se diversifier, avec le déclin des combustibles fossiles et de l'énergie nucléaire», a déclaré M. Né à Tokyo en 1952, M. Il s'est prononcé contre l'énergie nucléaire à la suite de la destruction de la centrale de Fukushima en mars 2011, causée par un tremblement de terre et un tsunami. Il avait aussi écrit la musique de ce film mettant aussi en vedette David Bowie. La maison de disques japonaise Avex a déclaré dimanche dans un communiqué que M. En 2022, il a annoncé qu'il était en phase terminale, un an après avoir révélé souffrir d'un cancer du rectum.

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Image courtesy of "Vanity Fair"

Ryuichi Sakamoto, Oscar-Winning Composer and Musical Innovator ... (Vanity Fair)

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.

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Image courtesy of "La Presse"

Le compositeur de The Last Emperor Ryuichi Sakamoto s'éteint à 71 ... (La Presse)

Ryuichi Sakamoto, compositeur et acteur japonais de renommée mondiale qui a composé la trame sonore de succès hollywoodiens tels que The Last Emperor et The ...

« La façon dont nous produisons de l’électricité va se diversifier, avec le déclin des combustibles fossiles et de l’énergie nucléaire », a déclaré M. Né à Tokyo en 1952, M. Il s’est prononcé contre l’énergie nucléaire à la suite de la destruction de la centrale de Fukushima en mars 2011, causée par un tremblement de terre et un tsunami. Il avait aussi écrit la musique de ce film mettant aussi en vedette David Bowie. La maison de disques japonaise Avex a déclaré dimanche dans un communiqué que M. Sakamoto a sorti un album complet en janvier, intitulé 12, à l’occasion de son 71e anniversaire.

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Image courtesy of "Dfdanse"

Ryuichi Sakamoto, membre du YMO et musicien japonais primé, est ... (Dfdanse)

Ryuichi Sakamoto, musicien et compositeur japonais de renommée mondiale et claviériste du légendaire groupe de musique électronique Yellow Magic.

Lawrence » de Nagisa Oshima, dans lequel il a joué le commandant japonais d’un camp de prisonniers, et a réalisé « The Last Emperor » et « The Sheltering Sky ». Sakamoto, qui a commencé à passer la plupart de son temps à New York au début des années 1990, a rendu public un diagnostic de cancer de la gorge en 2014 et de cancer du rectum en 2021. Il a joué dans plus de 30 films, dont « Merry Christmas, Mr. Le natif de Tokyo a joué dans le film de Borth « Merry Christmas, Mr. Plus tard, dans une interview, il a révélé que l’expérience « était au cœur de qui je suis ». Les chansons à succès de YMO incluent « Kimi Ni Mune Kyun » de 1983 (My Heart Beats for You).

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Image courtesy of "ICI.Radio-Canada.ca"

Ryuichi Sakamoto, tête chercheuse des musiques électroniques, est ... (ICI.Radio-Canada.ca)

Le foisonnant artiste Ryuichi Sakamoto, adulé dans son Japon natal, est mort d'un cancer le 28 mars à 71 ans.

Marié et divorcé à deux reprises, Ryuichi Sakamoto était notamment le père de la chanteuse de pop japonaise Miu Sakamoto, née en 1980 de son union avec la chanteuse et pianiste japonaise Akiko Yano. Né à Tokyo le 17 janvier 1952, il a grandi en baignant dans la culture et les arts, son père ayant été l'éditeur de grands noms des lettres du Japon, dont les immenses Kenzaburo Oe et Yukio Mishima. Ryuichi Sakamoto a aussi travaillé pour Brian de Palma et Pedro Almodovar, et plus récemment écrit la musique originale du film Le revenant (The Revenant), d'Alejandro González Iñárritu (2015).

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Image courtesy of "NBC News"

Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto dies at 71 (NBC News)

TOKYO — Ryuichi Sakamoto, a Japanese musician who scored for Hollywood movies such as “The Last Emperor” and “The Revenant,” has died.

He was a pioneer in electronics music of the late 1970s, founding the Yellow Magic Orchestra with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi. TOKYO — Ryuichi Sakamoto, a Japanese musician who scored for Hollywood movies such as “The Last Emperor” and “The Revenant,” has died. Sakamoto, who had suffered from cancer in recent years, had also acted in films, including playing a Japanese soldier in “Merry Christmas Mr.

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Image courtesy of "TVA Nouvelles"

Le compositeur japonais Ryuichi Sakamoto est mort à 71 ans (TVA Nouvelles)

Le compositeur japonais Ryuichi Sakamoto, auteur de nombreuses musiques de films, est décédé le 28 mars à 71 ans.

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Image courtesy of "Le Devoir"

Ryuichi Sakamoto, tête chercheuse des musiques électroniques et ... (Le Devoir)

Le grand public international l'a découvert avec ses musiques de films, à commencer par celle de Furyo de Nagisa Oshima (1983), film subversif sur un camp de ...

Marié et divorcé à deux reprises, Ryuichi Sakamoto était notamment le père de la chanteuse de J-pop Miu Sakamoto, née en 1980 de son union avec la chanteuse et pianiste japonaise Akiko Yano. Il découvre le piano très jeune. Tout en menant des études d’ethnomusicologie et de composition, ce qui lui vaudra au Japon le surnom respectueux de « professeur », il commence à se produire sur scène dans le Tokyo bouillonnant des années 1970.

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Image courtesy of "The Japan Times"

Ryuichi Sakamoto, an outspoken peace and environment activist (The Japan Times)

The award-winning composer took a particularly strong anti-nuclear stance that put him at odds with Japanese officialdom.

“(Rokkasho) is hugely profitable for the general contractors. But he was also an advocate for peace and environmental issues, in particular taking a strong anti-nuclear stance that put him at odds with Japanese officialdom. They know nuclear power is unnecessary and dangerous, and that it will be dangerous for hundreds of future generations because of the radioactive waste.

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Image courtesy of "The Guardian"

Ryuichi Sakamoto obituary (The Guardian)

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

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Image courtesy of "Crack Magazine"

Listen to a collection of Nokia ringtones composed by Ryuichi ... (Crack Magazine)

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.”

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