SAKAMOTO RYUICHI, who died on March twenty eighth after a protracted battle with most cancers, as soon as described his musical methodology thus: “I open my ears to the world.” However what Mr Sakamoto heard, few others may. As a member of the Japanese techno-pop band Yellow Magic Orchestra, he helped pioneer trendy digital music. As a composer of epic movie scores he enlivened the work of administrators resembling Bernardo Bertolucci and Alejandro Iñárritu. In his later solo work, he grappled with mortality in haunting ambient soundscapes. His passing elicited tributes from musical luminaries all over the world, testimony to the affect of his genre-spanning profession.
Mr Sakamoto was born in Tokyo in 1952 and took to music early. He graduated from one in every of Tokyo’s prime conservatories, the place he studied Western classical music, turning into particularly enamoured with Claude Debussy. There, he additionally explored an curiosity within the conventional music of Japan’s Okinawa prefecture in addition to in that of India and Africa.