“Ryuichi was at all times on the lookout for alternative ways of understanding music,” explains Todd Eckert, director of Kagami, an bold ‘combined actuality’ collaboration with the late, nice Ryuichi Sakamoto. “It’s not about expertise, though that’s elementary to what we’re doing. The entire level of that is the continuing connection between an artist and their viewers.”

As a result of premiere in June on the Manchester Worldwide Competition and The Shed in New York, Kagami guarantees a brand new sort of live performance expertise. ​​Viewers members will view the digital Sakamoto acting on piano through optically handled glasses, every music in encompass sound and accompanied by its personal set of visuals. The footage of Sakamoto, who developed the concept over 4 years with Eckert’s Tin Drum firm, was captured by 48 totally different cameras, permitting folks to wander across the stage and watch from totally different views.

“He was at all times fantastic to be round,” says Eckert, whose friendship with Sakamoto dates again to the late ’90s. “He would inform probably the most stunning, human, candid tales. He instructed me that when he was a baby, his instructor requested him, ‘What do you wish to be while you’re an grownup?’ He stated, ‘I wish to be nothing.’ It wasn’t nihilism, however extra like, ‘I wish to exist between the planes.’ And you would see in his eyes, throughout Kagami, he was feeling that once more. He checked out me and stated, ‘Bizarre child, huh?’”

Eckert reveals that Kagami’s setlist will embody just a few surprises, amongst them the primary ever ‘reside’ outing for “The Seed And The Sower” from Sakamoto’s ravishing soundtrack to 1983’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, and a beforehand unheard tribute to Bernardo Bertolucci, for whom he scored 1987’s epic The Final Emperor.

“Ryuichi and I have been in Tokyo and he pulled out this piece of sheet music from his bag. He stated, ‘Bertolucci was like a non secular father to me. When he died, I simply walked into my studio and I performed how I felt about him. The one those who have ever heard this music are his household on the funeral.’ In order that’s what we conclude with.”

In its personal distinct manner, Kagami ensures Sakamoto’s immortality. It was an concept not misplaced on the person himself. “This digital me is not going to age, and can proceed to play the piano for years, many years, centuries,” he mirrored, in notes on the present written earlier than his demise from most cancers in March. Within the phrases of Sakamoto’s favorite saying, extensively shared after his passing, “Artwork is lengthy, life is brief”.