A master's profound coda

A virtual concert by Ryuichi Sakamoto has captivated audiences. Its creator, Todd Eckert, talks about working with the Japanese composer, who died in March

- Laura Barton

TODD ECKERT IS EXPLAINING, in circuitous yet joyous fashion, how he first fell in love with the work of the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. It's a conversation that meanders through Eckert's teenage visit to Preston in northern England, his years as a punk rock kid in Houston, Texas, and his time producing the 2007 Joy Division film Control - yet ultimately always returns to Sakamoto's astonishing songcraft.

"Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence was not the first thing of his that I had heard - it may have been Left Handed Dream but it was the first thing that I totally understood," he says, sitting outside a Brooklyn cafe in bright yellow trainers.

Over the past few years, Eckert has spent a great deal of time trying to distil his feelings towards Sakamoto and his music as he has worked to create Kagami, a "mixedreality" concert, which premiered this summer at Manchester International festival and, simultaneously, at The Shed in New York. Next month it will appear at the Roundhouse in London.

Kagami is an extraordinary creation for many reasons the sheer technical wizardry of its making, of course, but also the fact that the work serves as a heartfelt posthumous tribute. In 2014, Sakamoto was diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer. After treatment, and a long period of remission, he announced a diagnosis of rectal cancer in 2021. He died in March this year, at the age of 71.

"Kagami is not meant to be a historical overview of his career at all," Eckert says. "It's supposed to be an energetic snapshot - because I don't want anything that smacks of being encyclopaedic or Let Us Praise the Great Man. That's just bullshit. I want it to be this feeling of currency. This is the way I would do it if he was here with me and that's really, really important."