Snow Falls | Ryuichi Sakamoto | Snow Falls | November 2017

Ryuichi Sakamoto has had a profound and unique impact in Japan and around the world as a composer, musician, and peace activist. Even people who don’t recognize his name have been stirred by Sakamoto’s award winning musical scores for films like “ The Last Emperor” and “The Revenant.” For years Sakamoto has dedicated himself to the cause of denuclearization, with compositions and performances that call on us to reflect on the human cost of tragedies from Hiroshima to Fukushima.
Music of Remembrance approached Mr. Sakamoto early this year with the hope of involving him as part of our Voices of Witness project, dedicated to Japanese and Japanese American wartime experience. Snow Falls is the first of two works that Mr. Sakamoto has created for our 2017-18 season. We’ll unveil the second, NAMÉ, at our concerts in Seattle and San Francisco next May.
Sakamoto has spoken openly about how his 2015 cancer diagnosis and treatment forced him to focus his time and passion on causes that matter most to him. His first major project after treatment was his score for the film “Nagasaki: Memories of My Son.” In the film, an aging mother is visited by the ghost of her son, whom she lost to the atomic bomb. For Snow Falls, Sakamoto has adapted musical elements from the film score to accompany the iconic poem by Kiyoko Nagase (1906-1995). The poem is presented both in the original Japanese and in an English translation by Empress
Michiko, who has long been one of Nagase’s admirers. The poem’s recollection of Hiroshima ends with these haunting words:
Quietly, so quietly, from the infinitely deep sky
Snow falls - ah, with what merciless mercy.
Snow falls
On this country of sorrow.
We offer this work with gratitude to Mr. Sakamoto, and as a prayer that the horror of nuclear war will never be visited on humanity again.
World Premiere, Commissioned by Music of Remembrance (2017)
Recorded live at the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall, Seattle on November 5, 2017
Ryuichi Sakamoto, composer
Naho Shioya, actress
Takumi Taguchi, violin; Mina Miller, piano
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