Get the latest gossip
Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘Opus’ Offers a Posthumous Celebration of the Japanese Musical Icon’s Work
Milan Records will release "Opus," featuring 20 selections chosen and performed by late Japanese musical luminary Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Yet his death in March 2023 only slowed — but did not stop — great recordings from coming from his expansive body of work: that same year Sakamoto released two new tracks for the soundtrack to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Monster,” contributed piano to a track on the debut studio album by South Korean rapper (and BTS member) Agust D, and with the help of his filmmaker son, Neo Sora, released “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus,” a career-spanning final piano performance recorded just a few months earlier. “BB” is unsurprisingly elegant but full of feeling — contemplative, even mournful of the late filmmaker he considered a mentor, but never aims to echo any of the film scores he contributed to Bertolucci’s work. That journey is further reiterated in solo piano arrangements of “Tong Poo,” one of the earliest tracks he recorded with pioneering electronic pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra, and “Happy End,” a 1981 collaboration with British musician Robin Scott.
Or read this on Variety
