Sakamoto Ryuichi built on his childhood musical ambitions after graduating from Tokyo University with excellent grades. As a child he learned to play piano and enjoyed a wide range of music. This diversity would influence his later compositions as his musical styles covers such a great number of musical genres. At university, he became especially interested in electronic music, a style with which he would be famously associated with for the rest of his career.
Sakamoto Ryuichi started his music career in 1978. In addition to releasing his solo album
Thousand Knives, he also joined together with project leader, bassist/keyboardist
Haruomi Hosono who recruited him along with drummer
Yukihiro Takahashi as session musicians for
YMO before they joined as full members of the band.
The band concept was to produce music which was inorganic and as electronically based as possible.
YMO's music although produced in the late 70s and 80s is still highly influential today as samples and remixes of the bands' famous tunes are often worked into modern electronic music. The band's first album,
The Yellow Magic Orchestra, was released in Japan in 1978 and because of its success, the album was remixed and released in the USA in 1979. Several of the band’s most famous singles over the next year or two, including
Firecracker,
Computer Game and
Tong Poo, were famous in the UK and USA as well as Japan. The band produced a number of albums before announcing their breakup in 1984, although the band did reform briefly in 1993 for one last album
Technodon before ceasing activities completely.
However,
Sakamoto Ryuichi carried on with his career with a strong pace becoming involved in collaborations with famous musicians including
David Sylvian, with whom he has worked extensively, and
David Bowie, with whom he played a part in the movie "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence."
Sakamoto also composed the musical score for this movie as well as many others, including "The Last Emperor" for which he won an Oscar, which is an award to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry. This was one of many acclaimed awards he received for his compositions. The year 1992 brought
Sakamoto worldwide recognition when he composed the score for the opening ceremony of the Barcelona Summer Olympics. He continued to release a number of albums in quick succession over the next few years, including
Sweet Revenge,
Smoochy and
1996.
Sakamoto Ryuichi continued to work on a wide range of projects. In the early 21st century, he became very concerned about the environment and worked on a release to promote landmine awareness. The musicians included various Japanese artists such as
TERU and
TAKURO from
GLAY,
Dreams Come True, and
SUGIZO, along with
Cyndi Lauper and
David Sylvian to name a few. Together, the group was called "NML," which stands for "No More Landmines." Also for the environment,
Sakamoto founded the
moreTrees project, which is a global initiative to plant more trees.
In 2004,
Sakamoto worked with
Alva Noto to release the multi-award winning and highly original electronic concept album
Vrioon based on glitch electronic. He was also involved in petitioning in copyright issues.
For the last few years,
Sakamoto has been keeping himself busy with the release of multiple albums, which include the music for two movie soundtracks. Within the last three months of 2009, he had an extensive European tour through seven countries.
The year 2010 holds a new project for the composer as he will create the music for an upcoming film titled
Norwegian Wood. Released in March was an original soundtrack for the movie "Love is The Devil," which was released in 1998. However, it will contain remixes by
Taylor Deupree. Toward the end of July, it was announced that
Sakamoto Ryuichi will have a USA and Canada tour which will begin on October 17th and end on November 11th.
Combining inventiveness, ingenuity, sensitivity and continuously moving the boundaries of music are what
Sakamoto Ryuichi has made his career from, for music fans we hope he will continue!
