“I think he finally came back to embracing the piano again.”
Great interview with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s son, Neo Sora, about OPUS, his film featuring his father in his final performance. Looking forward to seeing the film (via Pitchfork):
Great interview with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s son, Neo Sora, about OPUS, his film featuring his father in his final performance. Looking forward to seeing the film (via Pitchfork):
It harkens back to his lifelong fascination with the tension he felt between Western and non-Western music. He started to learn [piano] at three years old, and by age 18, he was totally proficient in the Western classical mode of composing. But at the time, Japan in the late ’60s and ’70s was a time of radical change and revolution, [where people were] criticizing and reconceptualizing the tradition they were steeped in. Simultaneously, he was learning a lot about ethnomusicology and the music of other traditions. So he started to really question this 12-tone system of Western music, and he tried to deconstruct that throughout his life.
At the same time, when the piano has been part of your body and muscle memory for so long, how do you escape that? It just happened to be the most familiar and fluid form of musical expression that he had. He wanted to fully explore its potential, and I think he finally came back to embracing the piano again.