Reel To Reel: Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus

The GRAMMY Museum is thrilled to host a special screening of Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus followed by a post-screening discussion about the legacy of Sakamoto with award-winning musician Flying Lotus and award-winning director Barry Jenkins.

In late 2022, the Japanese composer, producer, and artist Ryuichi Sakamoto sat down at the piano for a final performance. Too ill to complete an entire set at once, this concert film, Opus, is garnered from multiple sessions shot in Tokyo’s legendary NHK 509 Studio. Carefully curated by Sakamoto, selections include iconic film scores and YMO classics alongside pieces reflective of his eclectic career—“Andata” to “Aqua,” “Trioon” to entirely new compositions like “for Jóhann”—to tell the story of not only a prolific musician, but a tirelessly curious artist. As light shifts between each song, evincing the passage of a day, it catches the composer’s face and all the intimacy of the moment as memories flood an uncertain future. Directed by Neo Sora, Sakamoto’s own son, and captured in lush black and white, this is a rare and tender portrait of the artist.

ABOUT RYUICHI SAKAMOTO

Ryuichi Sakamoto was a composer, producer, artist, and environmental activist born in Tokyo. 

Making his debut in 1978 with the album Thousand Knives, Sakamoto’s diverse résumé includes pioneering electronic works in the legendary techno group Yellow Magic Orchestra, producing globally-inspired pop albums and numerous classical compositions, two operas, and nearly 40 original film scores for directors, including Bernardo Bertolucci, Pedro Almodóvar, Brian De Palma, and more recently Alejandro González Iñárritu for whom he composed the music of ‘The Revenant’. His film soundtracks have won prestigious awards, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and many more. Sakamoto’s activism has spread wide to include various environmental conservation efforts and promoting denuclearization and world peace. After 3/11 in Japan, he became a strong voice of support for the victims of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in Fukushima.

Sakamoto made considerable contributions to the art world with both solo and collaborative installations and multi-piece exhibitions presented in galleries and museums worldwide. Most recently, MWOODS (Beijing) presented the largest and most comprehensive collection spanning 30 years devoted to Sakamoto’s artworks in various media, centering around 8 large-scale sound installations.

In 2017, the documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: CODA (Stephen Nomura Schible) was released coinciding with the release of his renowned 14th solo album async. Additionally, Sakamoto presented unique performances at the Park Avenue Armory (NYC), later released worldwide as the film Ryuichi Sakamoto: async Live at the Park Avenue Armory. In 2021, with longtime collaborator Shiro Takatani, Sakamoto presented a new theater piece, TIME, which premiered at the Holland Festival.

Ryuichi Sakamoto died in early 2023. 

ABOUT OPUS

The late legendary composer Ryuichi Sakamoto’s highly anticipated posthumous album Opus, a collection of works performed as a final concert in the fall of 2022 before Sakamoto’s death in early 2023, was released via Milan Records.

Sakamoto provided a statement on the project after it was recorded, saying: 

The project was conceived as a way to record my performances—while I was still able to perform—in a way that is worth preserving for the future. In some sense, while thinking of this as my last opportunity to perform, I also felt that I was able to break new ground. Simply playing a few songs a day with a lot of concentration was all I could muster at this point in my life. Perhaps due to the exertion, I felt utterly hollow afterwards, and my condition worsened for about a month. Even so, I feel relieved that I was able to record before my death—a performance that I was satisfied with.

READ MORE HERE

ABOUT BARRY JENKINS

Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins’ feature film debut, Medicine for Melancholy, was hailed as one of the best films of 2009 by The New York Times and received several Independent Spirit and Gotham Award nominations. In 2017, along with playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, Jenkins received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his second feature, the Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning Best Picture Moonlight. As well as earning eight Academy Award nominations, ten Broadcast Critics Choice Awards nominations, six Golden Globe nominations and four BAFTA nominations, Moonlight won Best Picture and Director at the Gotham Awards and Best International Film by the British Independent Film Awards. In addition to NYFCC and NBR awarding Jenkins Best Director and LAFCA naming him Best Director and the film Best Picture, Jenkins received a DGA Best Director nomination and won the WGA Award for Best Original Screenplay. His third feature, the adaptation of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, went on to receive three Academy Award nominations and won Best Picture at the Independent Spirit Awards. Jenkins also received the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director. Jenkins’ next directorial feature film projects include a biopic of famed choreographer Alvin Ailey for Searchlight Pictures. Jenkins serves as a producer on Aftersun from BAFTA-winning Scottish filmmaker, Charlotte Wells.

Upcoming projects include MUFASA: The Lion King for Walt Disney Studios which he has directed and produced, and feature film The Fire Inside, based on the life of the first American female Olympic boxing champ Clarissa “T-Rex” Shields. Jenkins penned the script for The Fire Inside and serves as a producer on the film, which is directed by Rachel Morrison.

ABOUT FLYING LOTUS

It’s impossible to examine the music of the 2010s without considering Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus. A creative of many mediums, Ellison is just as likely to appear at Sundance with a film as he is to headline a music festival. His run of six studio albums, featuring collaborators like Thom Yorke, Erykah Badu, David Lynch, and longtime friend Thundercat, solidified him as one of the decade’s driving musical forces. So renowned is his aptitude that everyone from Kendrick Lamar, who recruited Ellison for the landmark To Pimp A Butterfly, to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim turns to him for inspiration. Pitchfork designated the LA-based artist an icon of the past 25 years, while the Recording Academy nominated him as Producer of the Year at the 63rd GRAMMY Awards. 

Member Check – In: 6:00pm

Nonmember Check – In / Doors: 6:30pm

Show Time: 7:00pm

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