Ryuichi Sakamoto
Ryuichi Sakamoto
17.01.1952 (72 gadi) (Tokyo, Japan)
Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本 龍一, Sakamoto Ryūichi, born January 17, 1952) (Japanese pronunciation: [sakamoto ɾʲɯːitɕi]) is a Japanese musician, singer, composer, record producer, activist, writer, and actor based in Tokyo and New York. Sakamoto began his career while at university in the 1970s as a session musician, producer, and arranger. His first major success came in 1978 as co-founder of the electronic-music trio Yellow Magic Orchestra. With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto helped pioneer the genres of synth-pop, techno, and house music.He concurrently pursued a solo career, releasing the experimental electronic fusion album Thousand Knives in 1978. Two years later, he released the album B-2 Unit; one track from it, "Riot in Lagos", has been said to have influenced the development of electro and hip hop music. He went on to produce more solo records, and collaborate with many international artists, David Sylvian, Carsten Nicolai, Youssou N'Dour, and Fennesz among them. Sakamoto has pursued a wide variety of projects in different genres, ranging from electronic to classical, to world music. He composed music for opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and his composition "Energy Flow" (1999) was the first instrumental number-one single in Japan's Oricon charts history.As a film-score composer, Sakamoto has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Grammy, and two Golden Globe Awards. Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) marked his debut as both an actor and a film-score composer; its main theme was adapted into the single "Forbidden Colours" which became an international hit. His most successful work as a film composer was The Last Emperor (1987), after which he continued earning accolades composing for films such as The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), and The Revenant (2015). On occasion, Sakamoto has also worked as a composer and a scenario writer on anime and video games. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Ministry of Culture of France for his contributions to music.