And to me. Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away.

It’s funny how your heart can break at losing someone you’ve never met. He’s the reason I started playing piano.

When I was living in Japan, his solo piano piece “Energy Flow” was used in a TV commercial. This was 1999 when everyone still watched TV and Japanese commercials were famous for the good music they used. Anyway, “Energy Flow” was suddenly every where. It was also the first solo instrumental piece to get to number one on the Japanese pop charts. In English media outlets, Sakamoto is generally discussed in terms of his film scores (he won an Academy Award for the score he did for the Last Emperor). But in Japan, he's famous for these impressionistic solo piano pieces. And also some amazing pieces for piano, violin and cello. And everyone, even if they don't listen to piano, recognizes Energy Flow.

I had always loved piano music but I fell in love with Energy Flow and somehow got the crazy idea that I could play it. And I eventually did, many of you have probably seen a video of me playing it actually.

Anyway, it's not coincidence that I started playing piano in 1999. I started to play piano because of Energy Flow, and I became a huge fan of Sakamoto. I probably have at least five books of his music on my piano shelf. I played through some of them today.

Energy Flow


Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

I’m sorry. His music is beautiful. ♥️

quote:

His music is beautiful

It certainly is!

The NYT write up is really good in case anyone is interested.