A Zen experience involving the late, great Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (17th January, 1952 – 28th March, 2023), Kagami fuses music with technology.
Before he passed, he collaborated with mixed-reality pioneers Tin Drum to create a final concert that will endure.
Through cutting-edge technology, Kagami enables us to feel as if Sakamoto is performing directly in front of us.
Wearing virtual reality glasses, you can literally walk around him and his open top grand piano, watching him play and seeing the video imagery surrounding him.
Kagami caters for most of those with prescription lenses too.
Initially, patrons are seated in a large circle and the glasses are handed to them.
Ryuichi Sakamoto and his Yamaha piano appear in the middle of a mandala (being a geometric configuration of symbols on the floor in the centre of the large room).
He performs a total of 10 numbers, the last being a tribute to Italian director and screenwriter Bernardo Bertolucci.
Sakamoto tells us – in one of two short spoken interludes – that he wrote the classical piece five minutes after hearing of Bertolucci’s death in 2018.
Sakamoto finishes that vignette with his head bowed.
Lasting approximately 45 minutes, the concert starts with the maestro at the piano being enveloped by fog from the legs down.
He is elegantly dressed in a grey jacket, buttoned up grey shirt and black waistcoat, sporting an enviable full head of snow-white hair and glasses.
Sakamoto’s second piece sees snowflakes falling, his third Criss Crossing lines of red, white and pink.
I position myself at the pointy end of the piano. Sakamoto’s keystrokes are apparent in the belly of the instrument.
Before he plays his fourth number, titled Energy Flow, he explains that he doesn’t understand why it became such a hit in Japan.
It is accompanied by a sepia toned video in snow covered woods, as snowflakes again cascade.
There are brief blackouts between pieces, when Sakamoto disappears momentarily.
Autumnal leaves flutter during the fifth number, while the sixth is the most dramatic yet. It is complemented by wide shots and close ups of cityscapes, one overlaying the other.
A suspended tree without roots grows in piece seven, while Sakamoto plays Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.
Photo courtesy Tin Drum
As the strength of the music builds, we witness the night sky with myriad stars and the blue Earth rotating underneath, before it disappears. Then the tree returns, lit up by bright white lights.
Small, fixed prisms of light are apparent all-around Sakamoto in the eighth number. These tiny objects – hundreds of them – begin to move up and then down.
The ninth piece is the most artistic. It appears to show a woodpile in a river, then a grungy grey and black wall, followed by marble statues.
And finally, we have a tribute named BB that I referenced earlier.
Kagami: Ryuichi Sakamoto & Tin Drum is a sensory delight – soothing and captivating.
Sakamoto appears relaxed and in his element.
This is an experience to savour and marks its debut in the southern hemisphere as part of Asia Topa.
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