Ryuichi Sakamoto:
Playing the Piano (Triptych)

This triptych began with Ryuichi Sakamoto's final concert, Playing the Piano 2022, a twenty career-spanning pieces recorded over eight days at Tokyo's NHK studio and streamed worldwide in December 2022, later refined into his swan-song film Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus.

Watching the stream, I saw this white creature: a vision of the composer's spirit taking form. The broadcast opened on Sakamoto from behind, seated at the piano, his hair freshly cut, every line trimmed clean, not a single hair longer than it needed to be. Precise, like the man himself. The first painting holds that exactness: the sharp-edged confidence of an artist who found success early and remains the first and only Japanese composer to win the Academy Award for Best Original Score. Angular brush strokes cut through the fur like that certainty.

But the director kept the moments where Sakamoto wasn't at his best, where he made an error and asked to go again. Under the shadow of his recurring cancer, these takes revealed a more human side of him. The second painting loosens its edges to hold that softness.

In the final passages, Sakamoto played with his eyes closed, and it seemed to me he was no longer performing music but becoming it. The third painting is that surrender: eyes shut, form dissolving into soft, flowing brushstrokes. Three months after the stream, Sakamoto passed away. The creature remains my way of believing he lives on inside his music.