The Japanese composer shares a home-recorded performance with all the people living in forced isolation as a result of the pandemic.
The musical world has been in suspended animation for over two months due to coronavirus. Many artists, despite not yet being able to perform in front of a live audience, have chosen to share songs and concerts online to ease their own loneliness and that of those forced to stay at home in isolation during the pandemic.
In recent days, musician, producer and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto also published a performance from the recording studio and garden of his New York home, dedicating it to people living in isolation. Thirty minutes of masterful improvisation in which the artist uses guitar feedback, caresses the piano, tinkers with analogue synthesisers, experiments with various percussion instruments, plays stones and other unconventional objects, immersing the listener in a meditative, cathartic and healing sonic flow.
First broadcast on 29 February on the Chinese video-sharing app Kuaishou, this performance by Sakamoto is part of the multimedia art project Voluntary garden: sonic cure, in which nine musical performers take turns, as a streaming extension of the exhibition held at the Ucca contemporary art centre in Beijing.
In an introductory post about the performance on Instagram, Sakamoto appeals to his audience: "Let's wash our hands. But we also need to save water. Let's maintain social distance. Stay inside, stay home. And I hope you enjoy the music."
Sakamoto, particularly sensitive to the issue of how one faces a serious illness and concerned about the terrible consequences of prolonged isolation, focuses on the healing power of music. And so, from the end of March, he began sharing online various recordings in which he has featured over recent years.
Among these, two rarities stand out, premiered on YouTube and available to watch free of charge for a limited period of time: the first is a performance recorded with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in 2013, with the maestro conducting the orchestra and playing piano, online from 24 April to 22 May. The second is a concert with the Yellow Magic Orchestra, recorded in 2008 during the annual edition of the Meltdown festival in London curated by Massive Attack, available to stream from 1 to 29 May.
Sakamoto has lived many musical lives. As keyboardist and songwriter with Haruomi Hosono's Yellow Magic Orchestra, he helped pave the way for synthpop. His solo experiments in blending global genres with studies in classical impressionism led him to compose soundtracks for over thirty films across as many years, among them Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor" and "The Sheltering Sky" and Alejandro González Iñárritu's "The Revenant".
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In just the last twenty years, this extraordinary artist has created a majestic multimedia work, transformed a glass building into a musical instrument, and travelled to the Arctic to record the sound of melting snow. The same exploratory spirit runs through his 2017 album "async", a sonic portrait on the passing of time following his recovery from throat cancer. "Music, work and life all have a beginning and an end," he said in early 2019. "What I want to do now is music freed from the constraints of time."