Sakamoto’s battle with stage three throat cancer, which was diagnosed in 2014, kept him away from music. Even listening to music was “too hard for me—maybe because music is too important to me. To enjoy it requires a certain amount of energy, and I lost a lot of it during [that time]”. 

He later transposed this life-changing experience into the beautiful compositions in his 2017 album async. For his Singapore concert, the Oscar-winning composer will be playing pieces from this deeply personal album, along with newer works, offering the audience an introspective reflection on the fragility of life.

The painful experience has also led him to become more appreciative of the little things in life. He shares, “After the harsh period of treatment, I had a normal Japanese meal at home in New York, and I was so happy to be able to do normal things.”

In Fragments, Sakamoto’s astute mastery of sound will be further heightened by the cinematic visuals of his friend and long-time collaborator, Shiro Takatani, who is the founder of the Japanese art collective, Dumb Type.

The multimedia artist expounds, “I first met Mr. Sakamoto in 1990 through a [mutual] friend at his [the latter’s] concert. After the concert, we headed to a special drag event in Osaka.” Sakamoto exclaims “It was the craziest party I have ever seen in my life—it was so different, I thought it felt like the city of Madrid!”

The friendship stuck and the duo went on to work together in a creative partnership that has spanned decades. Among them is a performance installation called dis.play in 2018, presented in Metz, France, as well as Silence Spins in 2012, which was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

At this year’s SIFA, Takatani will also be presenting a performance-installation, ST/LL, on May 24 and 25 at the Esplanade Theatre. This meditation on silence, which will unfold on a multimedia stage, is accompanied by the music of Sakamoto.

"I first touched the piano three years after I was born, and since then, it has always been with me,” Sakamoto explains. “However, the huge tsunami of 2011 affected me so much and changed my relationship with the piano. The disaster forced me to rethink about what nature and human civilisation are; I looked at the piano and thought that it was an assembly of wood, iron and some plastics that humans made. When it was destroyed by the tsunami, the natural materials—wood and iron—returned back to nature and it destroyed the artificial roots of the scales of the piano. I'm a musician and the instruments are very important. When I saw pictures of the instrumental wreckage done by the disaster, it shook my heart very much and it was very painful to see.”

Unknown items, people, places, feelings and sounds—these are just some of the things that fascinate Sakamoto in his daily life. Calling himself a “hungry man with lots of curiosities", the maestro is fascinated by things that he has never seen or learned before. 

The Singapore International Festival of Arts 2019 takes place till June 2.

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