Kagami/Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tin Drum review – magical AR performance brings legendary composer back to life

Ryuichi Sakamoto died in March aged 71, but the legendary Japanese composer/computer-pop pioneer/actor has left behind this extraordinary “never-before-experienced mixed reality presentation” with technology collective Tin Drum, showcased by the Manchester international festival. The audience are given “optically transparent devices” – special glasses a bit like a VR headset. Once they’re all on, Sakamoto appears as if by magic, playing a grand piano, virtual white clouds wafting around his feet as if he is, well, playing in heaven. Seconds later, he is surrounded by falling snowflakes.

The audience are invited to walk around, which brings the realisation that because this is in 3D it’s possible to stand just feet behind virtual Sakamoto as he plays. Being able to watch the delicacy of his hands on the piano at close quarters is a magical experience few will have witnessed during his lifetime. Eerily, the technology renders the audience transparent – you can see Sakamoto through them – so that it is we that appear as ghosts, the pianist as solid.

Suddenly he talks, explaining – with dry Japanese humour – that he really hadn’t expected 1999 piece Energy Flow to be a hit in his homeland. There are more effects – urban landscapes or a tree which roots beneath the piano – but it’s the music that dazzles most. The Oscar-winning theme for Nagisa Oshima’s 1983 film, Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence – the original instrumental version of Forbidden Colours, his pop hit with David Sylvian – is so hauntingly beautiful it receives a spontaneous ovation. His Academy Award winning theme for The Last Emperor (1987) is exquisitely placed between wistful and melancholy. He speaks for a second time to explain that he wrote the mournful BB five minutes after hearing that his friend director Bernardo Bertolucci had died.

As its creators acknowledge, Kagami [“mirror”] “isn’t perfect”: the imaging isn’t always entirely sharp and some backdrops could improve. However, it is an otherworldly, strangely moving, even groundbreaking experience, and will ensure that what is effectively Sakamoto’s final concert can be enjoyed for ever.