Ryuichi Sakamoto is one of the earliest innovators of modern electronic music. Born January 17, 1952, in Tokyo, he took up piano at the age of three, and regularly performed in jazz bands while in high school. Influenced by artists ranging from the Beatles to Beethoven and John Cage, he went on to study electronic music at Tokyo’s University of Art, and after graduating formed the techno-pop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, along with drummer Yukihiro Takahashi and bassist Haruomi Hosono, both of whom had some notoriety in the Tokyo music scene. Paralleling the technological aesthetic of German contemporaries Kraftwerk, YMO became stars in their native Japan. Their infamy began to extend internationally, with their 1980 single “Computer Game” reaching the Top 20 in Britain. Yellow Magic Orchestra is considered to be one of the most influential electronic music groups of the 1970s, with groups such as Prodigy and Orbital crediting YMO

While still in the Yellow Magic Orchestra, Sakamoto issued his first solo effort, 1978’s Thousand Knives Of. After the YMO’s 1983 breakup, Sakamoto pursued his solo career full-time, achieving his artistic and commercial breakthrough that same year with his acclaimed score to the film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (in which he also acted). The soundtrack also marked one of several collaborations between Sakamoto and David Sylvian, just one of his many intriguing musical unions.

Sakamoto’s US fame hit its peak in the late ‘80s, when he collaborated with David Byrne in writing the Academy Award-winning score to the 1987 film The Last Emperor, a dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China. Sakamoto also acted a major part in the movie, playing the role of Amakasu.

Sakamoto has worked extensively as a film music composer, having scored such movies as 1992’s Wuthering Heights, science fiction TV series Wild Palms, and Little Buddha.

Other works of note include the score to Pedro Almodovar’s High Heels and 1990’s Beauty, Sakamoto’s English-language debut, which featured cameos from Brian Wilson and Robbie Robertson. In 1993, he joined a reunited Yellow Magic Orchestra to record the LP Technodon. In 1998 he wrote the album Discord, his first complete work of classical music.

Most recently Sakamoto released the album Chasm, a broad spectrum of tracks crossing between beat-laden, very modern electronic compositions, to airy, new-age ambience. It was recently the subject of a remix album, entitled Bricolages.