The Japanese musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, a pioneer of electronic music, has died at the age of 71 after battling colorectal cancer, his team reported this Sunday.
Sakamoto had been suffering from cancer since 2020. “He continued to create works as long as his health allowed. He lived with music until the end,” his agency said in a statement. “Ars longa, vita brevis. Art is long (its apprenticeship), life is short,” the text highlighted as one of the composer’s favorite phrases.
That of the Japanese was a prolific career. He was one of the most internationally-reaching Japanese creators of his time, with a complex body of work that has spanned several stages, from his first successful group, the experimental Yellow Magic Orchestra, to the creation of soundtracks.
With this second facet, he won an Oscar for the music of The Last Emperor, for best soundtrack. He also put his signature on The Revenant. He also won a Bafta, a Grammy and two Golden Globes.
His last concert was on December 11, in an “online” format so that his fans from different time zones could listen to him, and when his cancer was already in stage IV, so many of his followers thought it could be the last. .
