Opus will premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
A concert film capturing the final performances of late Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto has been announced.
Opus was recorded in the months that preceded the venerated composer and Yellow Magic Orchestra component’s death in March 2023 and is stated to comprise a career-spanning set of performances, encompassing solo piano renditions of works from Yellow Magic Orchestra’s discography, score excerpts from such films as Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and The Last Emperor and more. The forthcoming visual was recorded from a studio housed within Tokyo’s NHK Broadcasting Center with direction and production roles helmed by Sakamoto’s son Neo Sora and wife Norika Sora respectively. Venice Film Festival will host the project’s premiere on September 5th.
A posthumous statement from Sakamoto shared in alignment with the concert film’s announcement elaborates
“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. We borrowed the NHK Broadcast Center’s 509 Studio to record in, which is a place that I think offers the finest acoustics in Japan.
I played every piece at home which we recorded on an iPhone to construct the overall composition of the concert that will express the progression of time from morning into night. Everything was meticulously storyboarded so that the camera positions and the lighting changed significantly with each song.
I went into the shoot a little nervous, thinking this might be my last chance to share my performance with everyone in this way. We recorded a few songs a day with a lot of care.
In some sense, while thinking of this as my last opportunity to perform, I also felt that I was able to break new grounds. 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.”
Watch the official trailer for Opus ahead of the concert film’s premiere below.
Words by Sam Wilkinson.
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