波の遊び
jeux de vagues
波の遊び jeux de vagues
These are some of the photos, videos and links that I saved while writing my latest article on Ryuichi Sakamoto for The Brooklyn Rail, “Play of the Waves.” These are impossible to share in print, so I created this page as something of a media supplement exploring Ryuichi’s many influences, collaborators and artworks. I hope you enjoy.
Cover of the 1905 first edition of Debussy's La Mer published by A. Durand & Fils.
An informative history of the storied venue, including a list of performances in the early 60s.
Herma (1961) for piano was Xenakis’s first composition for a solo instrument. It was commissioned in 1961 by Takahashi, whom Xenakis met on a trip to Japan in April of that year.
Music of Group Ongaku (1960 and 1961)
Poème symphonique is a 1962 composition by György Ligeti for one hundred mechanical metronomes.
Cage at Nanzenji Temple in Kyoto in 1962
The recordings of John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48) with Yuji Takahashi on prepared piano
Mieko Shiomi / event for the late afternoon / 1963
Oneness of Black Granite, 1971
Jiro Takamatsu / Stone and Numeral / 1969 / pebble and vinyl paint
Sakamoto’s debut work as a composer, “Dispersion, Boundary, Sand” 分散・境界・砂
(First performed by Aki Takahashi in 1976)
First performed at Rikio Harada's 2nd Private Concert "Takahashi Aki's Evening: Six Young Composers' Dedication to the Piano." This video doesn’t seem to be the original performance, but close. The orginal recording is available through Year Book 1971-1979.
“The Grey Wall” (1984)
A performance piece by Sakamoto to mark the publication of Long Phone, a collaboration with Yuji Takahashi. Photo courtesy of the artist ©Elizabeth Lennard.
高橋悠治＋坂本龍一 長電話 / Yuji Takahashi + Ryuichi Sakamoto long phone call / 1984
A record of four long phone calls between two musicians.
Video work featuring Sakamoto, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Laurie Anderson and Joseph Beuys
"Music to imagine or to listen to . . . with mind's ear" by Nam Yune Paik (1932-2006) / 1987 for New Music in the Kloveniersdoelen Middelburg
本本堂未刊行図書目録 / Honhondo Unpublished Book Catalog / 1984
Honhondo Unpublished Book Catalog presented unpublished book designs by ten artists, including Sakamoto’s former art teacher, Takamatsu
Nam June Paik, John Cage, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Photo: Yukihiro Yoshihara, 1984.
A doc about Sakamoto, filmed as he was working on Ongaku Zukan.
Tokyo Melody
a film by Elizabeth Lennard
1985
Tokyo Melody a film by Elizabeth Lennard 1985
Koharu Kisaragi & Haruomi Hosono TV MINI SESSION 1985 The world of “Night on the Galaxy Railway” / From NHK General Television's "Studio L: Koharu Kisaragi's Show Story" (April 1985).
Koharu Kisaragi and NOISE + Katsumi Watanabe, Haruna Miyake, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yuji Takahashi
A reimagining of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion to commemorate the 300th anniversary of his birth.
Strange Music for Nam June Paik
A performance of Nam June Paik's film and music by Sakamoto and Stephen Vitiello, 2013 at the Smithsonian.
Solaris (1972). Artemiev's score is centered around variations on Bach's "Chorale Prelude in F-Minor."
Water State I / Sakamoto + Takatani / 2013
Sapporo International Art Festival 2017
Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids
Min Tanaka x Sakamoto / Tate Modern
A collaboration between Apichatpong and Sakamoto from his album “async”.
M WOODS Hutong / Beijing
Lee Ufan, Dialogue, 2017-18, acrylic on canvas
Lee Ufan / Inhabiting Time / 2019
12 / 2023
Study for Vibration, possibly slow (blue).
Study for Intonation, 2 or 4 minutes (red).
Study for Articulation, possibly fast (yellow).
Study for Expression, 1, 3 or 5 minutes (grey).
Study for Conversation, free tempo (white).
Yuji Takahashi performs Corona for Pianists コロナ (1962)
A late 1960s version of Lee Ufan's "Relatum."
Jiro Takamatsu, Strings in Bottles. Performance from Atorie wo Tazunete (Visiting an Artist’s Studio), broadcast 1974, Tokyo Broadcasting System.
Cube no. 254 / Jiro Takamatsu / 1969
Lacquer on wood
In 1976, Sakamoto published 「反権力の音楽生産《環螺旋体経営？》」"Music Production of Anti-Authority (Circular Spiral Management?)" in the 10th Summer Issue of Transonic Music Magazine alongside work by Mieko Shiomi, Yuji Takahashi (who edited the magazine), and Akio Suzuki to name just a few.
Sakamoto had visited some of the Baschet brothers’ sound sculptures at Expo ʼ70 in Osaka. He later visited Ruiz’s restored sculptures in 2015.
Bill rehearsing for a concert with Monica Zetterlund swedish singer, and Alex Riel danish drummer in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Aki Takahashi Piano Space 1976
Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures
Yuji Takahashi, Ryuichi Sakamoto “Neue Wener Schule Klaviermusik” 1979
New Vienna School Piano Works Collection - a young Sakamoto performs piano works by composers of the New Viennese School alongside Yuji Takahashi
"Memories of Nazca (Non-dream device: Music as an anti-communal function)"
An epic piece of electronic music performed at a solo concert at the "Solo Exhibition," a contemporary music event. Also available on Yearbook.
ANDY WARHOL "RYUICHI SAKAMOTO" LITHOGRAPH, 1984
A page from Long Phone Call
Original Music by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Esperanto (1985)
Performed at Judson Memorial Church, NYC, September 16 2014 First Performance, November 23, 1985, The Endo Memorial Hall, Tokyo, Japan
"Bye Bye Kipling" was a mixed media video art installment that incorporated live events from Seoul, Tokyo, and New York, conceived and curated by Nam June Paik. Performances by Philip Glass, Lou Reed, and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
David Bowie, Paul Garrin,Yukihiro Yoshihara, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, etc.
A Tribute to N.J.P
A Tribute to N.J.P
Originally commissioned by the Sony Corporation of Japan and performed live on the JumboTRON, a fourteen-story TV set at the Expo in Tsukuba, Japan, Adelic Penguins is a collaboration between Fitzgerald, artist Paul Garrin and Sakamoto
TV WAR 1985
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Science and Technology excerpt from the opera
Sakamoto + Shiro Takatani’s installation fusing image and sound.
Tohoku Youth Orchestra (TYO)
Sakamoto founded and served as director of the Tohoku Youth Orchestra (TYO). The members of the orchestra are composed of primary, middle and high school students from the three prefectures most affected by the 2011 Tohoku disaster. : Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima.
Sakamoto and Daito Manabe, a media artist, collect electromagnetic waves from the environment and realize sensory world with visual and auditory images.
Le Grand Orchestre des Animaux, 2016.
"Glass" is an improvisational piece composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Carsten Nicolai, known by his stage name as Alva Noto, for Yayoi Kusama's installation Dots Obsession—Alive, Seeking for Eternal Hope, which ran in September 2016 at Philip Johnson's Glass House.
Made in collaboration with Shiro Takatani. When Sakamoto encountered a piano at a high school in Miyagi Prefecture that was washed out by the tsunami from the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, he interpreted the piano as one that had been re-tuned by the forces of nature. Sakamoto felt as if the piano were a corpse of an instrument once alive, and reanimated it as a device that expresses earthquakes, or the vibrations of the earth.
Directed by Stephen Nomura Schible
There is, in reality, a virtual me.
This virtual me will not age, and will continue to play the piano for years, decades, centuries.
Will there be humans then?
Will the squids that will conquer the earth after humanity listen to me?
What will pianos be to them?
What about music?
Will there be empathy there?
Empathy that spans hundreds of thousands of years.
Ah, but the batteries won’t last that long.
—Ryuichi Sakamoto, 2023
Thai film director, Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL, collaborated with SAKAMOTO and a team of creators led by TANIGUCHI Katsuya, one of Japan’s most skilled VR production engineers, to create his first interactive VR performance.
By Sakamoto + Shiro Takatani ; a haunting mugen noh—a type of noh theater set in dreams—about man, nature, and reincarnation.
2022 by artist collective Dumb Type
Lee Ufan / Dialogue / 2017 / acrylic on canvas
2020S behind-the-scenes
Visit Sakamoto’s library in Tokyo
Support Trees for Sakamoto
Support theTohoku Youth Orchestra