A project built around the surviving performance data of Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died in 2023, will open at MoN Takanawa: The Museum of Narratives in Tokyo on 24 December. Titled Ryuichi Sakamoto | Dialogue, it uses MIDI and other data left by the composer to create new musical experiences in collaboration with contemporary artists, passing his music and ideas on to a next generation.

The project has two programmes. The first, D, runs from 24 to 26 December and pairs pianist Hayato Sumino with artist Daito Manabe in an audiovisual performance. Sumino, who has said Sakamoto's music deeply influenced him, will play Sakamoto's works live while performing alongside a self-playing piano driven by Sakamoto's own recorded data, so the composer's playing and the living pianist's playing answer each other.

Manabe, who collaborated with Sakamoto many times during his lifetime, builds sound and image from Sakamoto's archived data together with data he captured himself at a live performance in 2020. Using spatial audio and visual staging, he creates a space in which the two performances cross, engaging with the soundscapes and electronic music Sakamoto explored throughout his career.

The second programme, Opus — dialogue, by Ken Furudate and Satoshi Hama, runs from 8 to 17 January 2027. The venue is MoN Takanawa: The Museum of Narratives, a cultural facility in Tokyo's Takanawa district. Together the two programmes frame Dialogue as a meeting between a recorded past and a live present, with Sakamoto's final piano performances returning as sound in the room rather than as a recording alone.