When Ryuichi Sakamoto started his first college term at Tokyo University of the Arts in 1970, he had a background in classical piano performance with a special affinity for daring-for-their-time composers like Debussy and John Cage. He likely envisioned a career path that involved working around music (he studied ethnomusicology) with occasional opportunities for performance. What’s transpired instead is a near half-century of prodigious and pioneering work that has utterly transformed music in multiple ways.

His groundbreaking work alongside Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi in Yellow Magic Orchestra was as influential as that of Germany’s Kraftwerk (but decidedly more fun), supplying the building blocks that hip-hop, dance music, and progressive electronic would build upon for the next several decades. Likewise, his scores for films set a bar for lushness and complexity that counter the bombastic backgrounds favored by many cinematic composers. Alongside this, Sakamoto has also maintained a vigorous and diverse dialogue with a vast array of musical styles, from bossa nova and dancefloor pop to avant-garde electronics and shamelessly commercial endeavors (he absolutely took Nokia’s money when they asked him to compose ringtones in 2005), all while refining and revising his relationship with his first instrument: the piano.

Given the breadth of Sakamoto’s work over the years, this Panorama eschews a chronological approach in favor of a stylistic organization, highlighting just a few of the areas in which he’s made an impact.