RIP. Ryuichi Sakamoto

4/3/2023

A master has died. Ryuichi Sakamoto was an innovator, transcending styles and mediums.

He was so productive that the New York Times ran a lush and knowing obituary on Monday -- yet never mentioned my favorite work involving Sakamoto-san.

"Casa" did not make the cut, squeezed out by work for movies ("The Last Emperor" for Bertolucci), modern collaborations with David Bowie, a performance at the opening ceremony at the 1988 Summer Olympics.

He was transplanted into my brain, my heart, two decades ago when I was listening to John Schaefer, New York's jewel of a music teacher, with his familiar radio show, "New Sounds."

Late one evening, Schaeffer's new sound was a CD entitled "Casa" -- "Morelenbaum2 Sakamoto" -- a cellist with a beard (Jaques Morelenbaum), a beautiful singer (Paula Morelenbaum), and a pianist (Sakamoto) -- all three interpretating the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim.

La casa? The interpretetations evolved in the home of the late Tom Jobim, in Rio, and later recorded in studios in Rio. Rarely do you see creative genius intermingling, so respectfully. Jacques Morelenbaum suggests (in thick English) a dramatic piano chord to end one song, as Sakamoto nods his mane, Paula Morelenbaum reclines casually on a sofa, then out of nowhere she tries out a phrase in Portuguese or maybe English.

Over the years I realized that Sakamoto lived in Greenwich Village and later I read that he was fighting cancer. Then on Monday I read a lush and informed obituary by William Robin in The New York Times. Sakamoto was 71.

Favorite new fact? His influences ranged from Claude Debussy to John Cage (who has been one of my wife's favorites for many years.)

Maybe you can access the link to Sakamoto's obituary in Monday's NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/arts/music/ryuichi-sakamoto-dead.html
And maybe you will enjoy the interplay among these artists, courtesy of YouTube:

bruce

4/3/2023 06:52:16 pm

george,

saw the obit but wasn't familiar with his work tho i have see the last emperor a few times.

also saw bowie in merry christmas mr lawrence tho several years before i moved to japan.

bruc

4/4/2023 08:21:28 am

Bruce, that's the thing - he was everywhere. I heard his Olympic composition in Barcelona in 1988 ...and had no idea who he was,
Here's a list (partial?) of his work over the decades. GV

https://musicianguide.com/biographies/1608001378/Ryuichi-Sakamoto.html

bruce

4/4/2023 09:07:27 am

george,

thanks.

i remember enjoying the film and thought bowie was good.

after i moved to japan, i saw a few actors that were big there who were in the movie,

i remember seeing "black rain" and thinking how awful osaka looked as they were flying in.....if you'd told me i've be living there in four years i would've thought 'in what world is that possible'.....and yet.

bruce

Randolph

4/3/2023 07:00:30 pm

George,
I was not familiar with these musicians.
Beautiful.
Thanks,
R

Altenir Silva

4/3/2023 07:31:25 pm

Dear George,
What a fantastic meeting: the Morelenbaums and Sakamoto in Tom Jobim's house. I think Rio (which I love so much) and New York, specifically Greenwich Village (which I also love so much), have a common point: the love for art and freedom. It's marvelous. Tom Jobim had an excellent quote about this connection: "Living in New York is good, but it sucks; living in Rio sucks, but it's good."
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Sakamoto, a true giant.
Be well/Altenir

4/4/2023 08:24:51 am

Bom dia, Altenir: You are certainly rooted in Ipanema and the Village-- the epochal baptism of Neo in the Village, the New Year's Eve of Neo at the Jobim statue in Ipanema. GV

https://www.georgevecsey.com/home/the-kid-from-ipanema-and-tom-jobim-happy-new-year

Ed Martin

4/3/2023 10:57:01 pm

Love Jobim, AstrudGilberto, and Bossa Nova. Thank you for sharing this rare and wonderful tape. I did not know this group.

I hope you won’t mind if I share a You Tube link to a Bossa Nova my son Scott wrote, sung by Josephine Mendez. This is an informal shot of them rehearsing for performances in Boulder, Denver and a recording.

When I first heard it, I thought Jobim has composed it.
Hope you like it. Scott Andrew Martin, there are other Scott Martins on You Tube.

Aquel Gorrion
Song by Scott Martin
OverviewListen
Main Results
Images
Aquel Gorrión by Scott Martin and Josefina Mendez | Facebook
Aquel Gorrión by Scott Martin and Josefina Mendez | Facebook

4/4/2023 08:36:05 am

https://www.facebook.com/Liberian-Handshake-Records-268872983913811/videos/aquel-gorri%C3%B3n-by-scott-martin-and-josefina-mendez/1736979356440815/

Dear Ed and Peggy: Nice to hear (and see) your talented son, and get to know Josefina Mendez (singing in Spanish, not Portuguese, I note)....Very sweet. A gorrion is a sparrow, in English. Best, G&M

4/4/2023 11:57:07 am

Je regret! (Not Portuguese either,). I should have known better, que pasa? Lovely song, lovely singer, Brazilian feel to me. Enjoy.
Obrigado.

4/3/2023 11:04:16 pm

Apology. I, or Apple, Anglicized Josafina’s name.

John McDermott

4/4/2023 12:10:03 am

Sometimes a film can affect you deeply for very personal reasons. So it was for me when I saw Merry Christmas, Mr.Lawrence, with David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tom Conti in 1983. Nakamoto's haunting soundtrack for the film chokes me up every time I hear it. I was never a POW, but I had several friends who were, and a few others who weren't so lucky. I still think of them often. Here is Sakamoto, playing the theme song solo on the piano in a studio... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9tECKZ60zk

4/4/2023 08:43:08 am

John, thanks, man. I will listen to Sakamoto.
I do not know the movie at all....but will try to find it.
I have met only one person who was shot down in VN and survived captivity -- spent an hour in his office when he was senator from Arizona. Great guy. Marianne sat next to one of his pals on a long flight to Asia....and found out that McCain was part of a cadre of ex-=POWs who shipped goods to VN. I asked him what motivated them to give something back to their captors, and he shrugged those broken shoulders, eloquently suggesting that it was the right thing to do, Why he is one of my heroes. I'll check out the movie...Ciao, GV

John McDermott

4/4/2023 09:09:14 am

McCain was one of my heroes as well. He wasn't perfect, but he was a profoundly decent man. That he was never bitter says a lot. My deep disdain for Trump took a major escalation when he insulted McCain and called him a loser because he was shot down and taken prisoner. Trump never would have survived in the Navy. People usually saw right through the bullshit of guys like him and gave them a very wide berth. The idea that a rich kid whose daddy paid a doctor for a sick note to get him out of the draft ended up years later as Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces made me sick.

bruce

4/4/2023 09:46:44 am

john,

you were a bit hard on trump.

i recall him saying his vietnam was avoiding venereal disease.

doesn't get more moral or selfless than that.

bruce

Joshua Rubin

4/4/2023 10:42:51 am

Nice reflection, George. He's on my list to dig into, I've been remiss so far.

Meanwhile, I'm so delighted you mention John Cage. Cage is a big deal in our house, at least in part because Jennifer (and me via her) were big Merce Cunningham fans. I really enjoyed Where the Heart Beats, a bio of Cage that focuses on his connection with Zen Buddhism and how that influenced so much music, art, and dance that came after.

PS 4'33" is actually a track you can "listen" to on Spotify.

Terry

4/4/2023 02:23:44 pm

Thanks so much for sharing.
Enjoyed the music of this amazing man!

4/5/2023 08:37:44 am

Terry, nice to hear from you. Best to all. G

4/5/2023 08:36:06 am

Josh, Marianne read his book, "Silence," years ago, and laughed on just about every page.
Chag Pesach Sameach
GV

Tra Ishikawa

4/4/2023 02:56:56 pm

Thank you, George. I didn't know this video. I found his work for NOKIA to compose their ring tones. It's very interesting.
https://youtu.be/z9intgzzLfk

4/5/2023 08:40:39 am

Tra: Although Sakamoto lived in Greenwich Village for a long time, he has been a presence in Japan, demonstrating for ecology and peace. I think he certainly infused the songs on "Casa" with a spare eastern sense of pace. (at least to my ear)....best, GV

Roy Edelsack

4/5/2023 06:42:40 am

On June 10, 2014 on this very blog you turned us all on to the beautiful "Casa". You told us it was the most played album on your iPod (remember them?) and that the first time you heard it you rushed out and bought the CD (remember them?) at Tower Records (remember them?).

I've been playing it ever since.

Thank you.

4/5/2023 08:46:14 am

Roy, that makes me happy....I am sure I repeat my stories in person and on this little website,
I try to credit John Schaefer for introducing me to that, and other music...just as I remember the first time I heard Victoria de los Angeles singing "Songs of the Auvergne" summer of 72 as we unpacked in our new house on LI -- as sign we were home,.
Or maybe I've written that before, also.
Best, GV

Andy Tansey

4/5/2023 11:47:26 pm

Great! Thank you ALL very much. I now know something I'd've never known but for this site and exchange.

Haruko Hasumi

4/20/2023 09:43:39 am

Very lovely obituary.　I shared it on my Facebook.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

RIP. Ryuichi Sakamoto

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